The old familiar glamour glowed brighter and brighter to Lucia as Daisy spoke. She wondered if she had made a mistake in not accepting the ludicrous part of Drake’s wife, just in order to get a footing in these affairs again and attend committees, and, gradually ousting Daisy from her supremacy, take the part of the Queen herself. She felt that she must think it all over, and settle whether, in so advanced a stage of the proceedings, it could be done. At present, till she had made up her mind, it was wiser, in order to rouse no suspicions, to pretend that these things were all very remote. She would take a faint though kindly interest in them, as if some elderly person was watching children at play, and smiling pensively at their pretty gambols. But as for watching the fête when the date arrived, that was unthinkable. She would either be Queen Elizabeth herself, or not be at Riseholme at all. That was that.

‘Well, you have got your work cut out for you, dear Daisy,’ she said, giving a surreptitious tug at the knotted tape of Pepino’s poems. ‘What fun you will have, and, dear me, how far away it all seems!’

Daisy wrenched her mind away from the thought of the fête.

‘It won’t always, dear,’ she said, making a sympathetic little dab at Lucia’s wrist. ‘Your joy in life will revive again. I see you’ve got Pepino’s poems there. Won’t you read me one?’

Lucia responded to this gesture with another dab.

‘Do you remember the last one he wrote?’ she said. ‘He called it “Loneliness”. I was away in London at the time. Beginning:

The spavined storm-clouds limp down the ruinous sky, While I sit alone.

Thick through the acid air the dumb leaves fly…

But I won’t read it you now. Another time.’

Daisy gave one more sympathetic poke at her wrist, and rose to go.

‘Must be off,’ she said. ‘Won’t you come round and dine quietly tonight?’

‘I can’t, many thanks. Georgie is dining with me. Any news in Riseholme this morning?’

Daisy reflected for a moment.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Mrs Antrobus’ got a wonderful new apparatus. Not an ear-trumpet at all. She just bites on a small leather pad, and hears everything perfectly. Then she takes it out of her mouth and answers you, and puts it back again to listen.’

‘No!’ said Lucia excitedly. ‘All wet?’

‘Quite dry. Just between her teeth. No wetter anyhow than a pen you put in your mouth, I assure you.’