‘No, but she always scores,’ said Diva, ‘and sometimes it’s hard to bear. She got my house with garden-produce thrown in for eight guineas a week and she lets her own without gardenproduce for twelve.’

‘No dear, I pay fifteen,’ said Lucia.

Diva stared at her open-mouthed.

‘But it was down in Woolgar’s books at twelve,’ she said. ‘I saw it myself. She is a one: isn’t she?’

Lucia maintained her attitude of high nobility, but this information added a little more pickling.

‘Dear Elizabeth!’ she said. ‘So glad that she was sharp enough to get a few more guineas, I expect she’s very clever, isn’t she? And here come the gentlemen. Now for a jolly little game of bridge.’

Georgie was astonished at Lucia. She was accustomed to lay down the law with considerable firmness, and instruct partners and opponents alike, but tonight a most unusual humility possessed her. She was full of diffidence about her own skill and of praise for her partner’s: she sought advice, even once asking Georgie what she ought to have played, though that was clearly a mistake, for next moment she rated him. But for the other two she had nothing but admiring envy at their declarations and their management of the hand, and when Diva revoked she took all the blame on herself for not having asked her whether her hand was bare of the suit. Rubber after rubber they played in an amity hitherto unknown in the higher gambling circles of Tilling; and when, long after the incredible hour of twelve had struck, it was found on the adjustment of accounts that Lucia was the universal loser, she said she had never bought experience so cheaply and pleasantly.

Major Benjy wiped the foam of his third (surreptitious and hastily consumed) whisky and soda from his walrus-moustache.

‘Most agreeable evening of bridge I’ve ever spent in Tilling,’ he said. ‘Bless me, when I think of the scoldings I’ve had in this room for some little slip, and the friction there’s been… Mrs Plaistow knows what I mean.’

‘I should think I did,’ said Diva, beginning to simmer again at the thought of garden-produce. ‘Poor Elizabeth! Lessons in self-control are what she wants and after that a few lessons on the elements of the game wouldn’t be amiss. Then it would be time to think about telling other people how to play.’