‘You’re a stern man, Mr Melford,’ Collis replied.

‘Yes,’ said Laurence Melford. ‘And you’re even more of a devil than I first thought.’

‘Well,’ Collis told him, ‘you know what Shelley said. Sometimes the devil is a gentleman.’

At the far end of the reception room, on a small dais, a string quartet struck up a quadrille, and a few of the prettier girls and some of the younger men began to dance. Collis paused for a while and watched them, his hands in his pockets, and he smiled at their stiffness and lack of grace. There were two things that obviously didn’t travel well from the East Coast: wine, and stylish dancing.

‘I’ve seen a troupe of Polish Army horses dance better than that,’ Collis remarked to Andy.

Andy grimaced. ‘There’s a lack of good dancing teachers, that’s the trouble. The best one was Ralph Durkee, and he went off to the diggings.’

‘A dancing master, digging for gold?’

Andy nodded. ‘There’s no distinctions out at the diggings. It’s every man for whatever he can get. You ought to get Charles to take you out to someplace like French Corral or Nigger’s Hill. You’ve come all this way, you might as well see the elephant. You think this dancing’s rough? You should see Saturday night out at Dutch Flat.’

After a while, when they’d had enough of watching the clockwork prancing of San Francisco’s young socialites, Collis and Andy walked through to the buffet table, which was set up in John Frémont’s back room, under a large dark oil painting of Sonoma in a thunderstorm. The table was magnificently decorated with flowers and shining silver tureens, and the buffet itself was arranged like the foothills and peaks of the High Sierras. Dish was stacked upon dish, garnished with oranges and limes and slices of avocado. There were clams, fried on the half shell; broiled lobsters, scarlet and singed at the edges; jellied shrimps; roast turkeys with crackly skins; hams; herrings; glazed pigs’ heads with eyebrows of piped lard; headcheese; hot pork and beans; and a tumbling confusion of fruits, cheeses, nuts, and cookies.

Collis and Andy ate, and drank more champagne, and by the time nine-thirty chimed, Collis was brimming over with well-being, and more than ready to introduce himself to Sarah Melford. His conviviality was slightly strained, and he knew that he was mainly cheerful because he was drunk, but he didn’t give a damn for Hannah, not a two-bit damn, and if she wanted to waste away the rest of her life with a haberdasher, then by God that was quite all right with him.

‘Now, you’re not going to cause another of your ruckuses, are you?’ asked Andy.

‘Certainly not,’ said Collis, his cheeks flushed and his eyes dewy. ‘Your trouble, Andy, is that you don’t have enough faith in my New York courtesies and code of behaviour. I’m a gentleman, and besides, the plural of “ruckus” is “rucki”. They taught me that much at school.’