‘I think everybody is a shade mad this morning,’ she observed, ‘and I should call Mr Wyse, if anybody asked me to be candid, a raving lunatic. There was a little misunderstanding months and months ago – I am vague about it – concerning two pictures that Lulu and Georgie sent in to the art exhibition in the summer. I thought it was all settled and done with. But I did act a little irregularly. Technically I was wrong, and when I have been wrong about a thing, as you very well know, dear Diva, I am not ashamed to confess it.’

‘Of course you were wrong,’ said Diva cordially, ‘if Mr Wyse’s account of it is correct. You sent the pictures back, such beauties, too, with a formal rejection from the hanging committee when they had never seen them at all. So rash, too: I wonder at you.’

These unfavourable comments did not make the transaction appear any the less irregular.

‘I said I was wrong, Diva,’ remarked Elizabeth with some asperity, ‘and I should have thought that was enough. And now Mr Wyse, raking bygones up again in the way he has, has written to me to say that he and Susan resign their places on the hanging committee.’

‘I know: they told everybody,’ said Diva. ‘Awkward. What are you going to do?’

The barometer had jerked alarmingly downwards on this renewed tapping.

‘I shall cry peccavi,’ said Elizabeth, with the air of doing something exceedingly noble. ‘I shall myself resign. That will show that whatever anybody else does, I am doing the best in my power to put right a technical error. I hope Mr Wyse will appreciate that, and be ashamed of the letter he wrote me. More than that, I shall regard his letter as having been written in a fit of temporary insanity, which I trust will not recur.’

‘Yes; I suppose that’s the best thing you can do,’ said Diva. ‘It will show him that you regret what you did, now that it’s all found out.’

‘That is not generous of you, Diva,’ cried Elizabeth, ‘I am sorry you said that.’

‘More than I am,’ said Diva. ‘It’s a very fair statement. Isn’t it now? What’s wrong with it?’

Elizabeth suddenly perceived that at this crisis it was unwise to indulge in her usual tiffs with Diva. She wanted allies.

‘Diva, dear, we mustn’t quarrel,’ she said. ‘That would never do. I felt I had to pop in to consult you as to the right course to take with Mr Wyse, and I’m so glad you agree with me. How I trust your judgment! I must be going. What a delightful evening we have in store for us. Major Benjy was thinking of declining, but I persuaded him it would not be kind. A house-warming, you know. Such a special occasion.’