‘You are a lucky man, Thomas, to have a young wife.’

‘I have never considered myself an especially fortunate or favoured man. It makes no difference, you know, young or old … it’s all sweet for a space and then – lamentation. One is best left chasing the intangible essences, the aroma. But, yes, it helps to have young women around. I was talking to a rare beauty today. Lady Ilchester’s daughter. A mere fifteen. Fair skin and a full mouth. A face of almost perfect classicality; Greek softened into English. I wonder who will marry her? I often wonder who marries these girls. Florence, of course, didn’t like it.’

‘Were you flirting?’

‘I do not care for flirting. Too much cruelty in it. I was disinterestedly kind. As is her mother to me, and as are not all handsome women when they meet an honest man.’

‘You say her name is Lady Ilchester? Do you know many members of the aristocracy?’

‘Sir, I know them all. The Prince comes here to tea. I am descended, of course, from an old aristocratic line myself – half French; but it is extinct now. It was enfeebled and wore itself out.’

‘Will you tell me what you were talking to Lady Ilchester’s young daughter about?’

‘Ha – so long as Florence doesn’t catch me. She didn’t approve. She cares about propriety. She comes from the town, you see. She watches over me to guard me from excess. And she pesters me to install her a bath. A modern woman. What did you ask me? Ah yes, what was I talking to the young beauty about – Mary Channing. Do you know her story?’

‘I don’t think I do.’

‘Well, they said she had poisoned her husband – which she hadn’t – and they burnt her in Maumbury Ring. Before they burnt them in those days – I’m going back two hundred years or more – they strangled them, you know. More humane. Only on this occasion they hadn’t strangled her enough. So, just when the flames are enveloping her nicely and a good rich smell of burning flesh is filling every nostril, she opens her eyes, sees through the fire ten thousand faces agape, and begins to shriek. A kindly constable rushes forward and thrusts a swab in her mouth to silence her cries, but before he can get out of the way the milk squirts out of her bosoms – she had recently given birth to a child, you see – and hits him full in the face. Everyone at the front of the crowd jumps back for fear of being squirted likewise. And it is a long time before any one of them can relish the idea of a Sunday roast or a mug of warm milk again.’

‘And was this the story you told to Lady Ilchester’s sixteen-year-old daughter?’

‘Fifteen she is. Yes, with embellishments, that’s the story I told her. The poor girl turned quite white and nearly fainted clean away.’