Every night without fail Lady Pole and Stephen Black were summoned by the sad bell to dance in Lost-hope’s shadowy halls. For fashion and beauty these were, without a doubt, the most splendid balls Stephen had ever seen, but the fine clothes and smart appearance of the dancers made an odd contrast with the mansion itself which exhibited numerous signs of poverty and decay. The music never varied. The same handful of tunes were scraped out by a single violin, and tooted out by a single pipe. The greasy tallow-candles – Stephen could not help but observe with his butler’s eye how there were far too few of them for such a vast hall – cast up strange shadows that spun across the walls as the dancers went through their figures.

On other occasions Lady Pole and Stephen took part in long processions in which banners were carried through dusty, ill-lit halls (the gentleman with the thistle-down hair having a great fondness for such ceremonies). Some of the banners were ancient and decaying pieces of dense embroidery; others represented the gentleman’s victories over his enemies and were in fact made from the preserved skins of those enemies, their lips, eyes, hair and clothes having been embroidered on to their yellow skins by his female relations. The gentleman with the thistle-down hair never grew tired of these pleasures and he never appeared to entertain the slightest doubt that Stephen and Lady Pole were equally delighted with them.

Though changeable in all else, he remained constant in two things: his admiration of her ladyship and his affection for Stephen Black. The latter he continued to demonstrate by making Stephen extravagant gifts and by sending him strange pieces of good fortune. Some of the gifts were made, as before, to Mrs Brandy on Stephen’s behalf and some were sent directly to Stephen for, as the gentleman told Stephen cheerfully, “Your wicked enemy will know nothing about it!” (He meant Sir Walter.) “I have very cleverly blinded him with my magic and it will never occur to him to wonder about it. Why! You could be made Archbishop of Canterbury tomorrow and he would think nothing of it! No one would.” A thought appeared to strike him. “Would you like to be Archbishop of Canterbury tomorrow, Stephen?”

“No, thank you, sir.”

“Are you quite certain? It is scarcely any trouble and if the Church has any attraction for you … ?”

“I promise you, sir, it has none.”

“Your good taste as ever does you credit. A mitre is a wretchedly uncomfortable sort of thing to wear and not at all becoming.”