‘I will give anybody three guesses as to what I have seen this morning,’ she said. ‘Mr Wyse, Major Benjy, Padre, you must all guess. It is about someone whom we all know, who is still an invalid. I was sketching this morning at the top of the tower, and happened to glance down into my pet little secret garden. And there was Lucia in the middle of the lawn. How was she dressed, and what was she doing? Three guesses each, shall it be?’

Alas! The introductory tantalisation had been too long, for before anybody could guess anything the Contessa broke in again.

‘But never have I read such a letter!’ she cried. ‘It is from Mrs Lucas. All in Italian, and such Italian! Perfect. I should not have thought that any foreigner could have had such command of idiom and elegance. I have lived in Italy for ten years, but my Italian is a bungle compared to this. I have always said that no foreigner ever can learn Italian perfectly, and Cecco too, but we were wrong. This Mrs Lucas proves it. It is composed by the ear, the spoken word on paper. Dio mio! What an escape I have had, Algernon! You had a plan to bring me and your Mrs Lucas together to hear us talk. But she would smile to herself, and I should know what she was thinking, for she would be thinking how very poorly I talk Italian compared with herself. I will read her letter to you all, and though you do not know what it means you will recognise a fluency, a music…’

The Contessa proceeded to do so, with renewed exclamations of amazement, and all that bright edifice of suspicion, so carefully reared by the unfortunate Elizabeth, that Lucia knew no Italian, collapsed like a house built of cards when the table is shaken. Elizabeth had induced everybody to accept invitations to the second po-di-mu in order that all Tilling might hear Lucia’s ignorance exposed by the Contessa, and when she had wriggled out of that, Elizabeth’s industrious efforts had caused the gravest suspicions to be entertained that Lucia’s illness was feigned in order to avoid any encounter with one who did know Italian, and now not only was not one pane of that Crystal Palace left unshattered, but the Contessa was congratulating herself on her own escape.

Elizabeth stirred feebly below the ruins: she was not quite crushed.

‘I’m sure it sounds lovely,’ she said when the recitation was over. ‘But did not you yourself, dear Mr Wyse, think it odd that anyone who knew Italian should put un po’ di musica on her invitation-card?’

‘Then he was wrong,’ said the Contessa. ‘No doubt that phrase is a little humorous quotation from something I do not know. Rather like you ladies of Tilling who so constantly say “au reservoir”. It is not a mistake: it is a joke.’

Elizabeth made a final effort.