She began to look around for solutions. She knew that she could offer to send money for Maire’s operation, but would the savings she had been able to put away be enough to pay for this? She could, perhaps, admit to having sold the heirloom but lie about the sum she had received for it, setting down, as an example, the amount which the old pawnbroker had first offered her. But she was not very comfortable with this blatant untruth. And might her brother be so furious with her in any case, no matter what she had got for the necklace, that he would engage a lawyer to hound her? What – in Heaven’s name – would be her financial position if he brought a legal case against her for appropriation of family property? What would become of her beloved tea room and all her marvellous endeavours? She loved her tea room. She was insanely proud of it. She thought it the most comfortable and consoling place in the world, and she could not bear the thought of losing it.

Sir William Adeane came hurrying down to Camden Street just after six o’clock.

He found a ‘closed’ sign on the tea room door, but knocked urgently upon it and, eventually, Clorinda appeared and opened it. When she saw Sir William, the tears which she had been holding back all afternoon in front of her clientele came forth in sudden abundance. She just could not help them. And Sir William could not help what he did next, which was to take Clorinda Morrissey in his arms.

While Mary and the other girls peered at them over the service counter, Sir William held Clorinda close to his chest and laid a kiss on her disordered hair. And the truth was, he felt like crying himself because this proximity to the adorable Mrs Morrissey was something which he had dreamed about for weeks and weeks and yet he had never attempted any approach to her, dreading to trespass upon the integrity of her person and upon unrequited feelings.

Now, of course, he wanted to kiss her mouth and when she threw back her head and looked at him, with her pink cheeks all asparkle with her Irish tears, she seemed to be challenging him to do just this. It was so long since Sir William had kissed anybody that he wondered if he remembered correctly how it was done, but he was not left to wonder for long, for Clorinda brought her lips to his and pressed herself more tightly to him. That they were half in and half out of the tea room doorway as they gave way to their sudden passion only caused Sir William divine amusement. It confirmed in his mind the belief that life, so often so cruel in the way it thrust the human soul into prisons from which there seemed to be no escape, could sometimes place it athwart an open door.

That evening, at supper, Sir William told Jane that his life was ‘just a little changed’ and that he had it in mind, when the summer came, to make Clorinda Morrissey his wife.