They entered the brightly-lit hallway and crossed the figured marble floor. A black footman in a powdered periwig was waiting to take their hats, their canes, and their cloaks, and then another footman led them through to the door of the main reception room to have their names announced. As Collis saw the sparkling mirrors and spangled lights, and as he heard the warbling of courteous conversation, he felt a sharp twinge of nostalgia for New York. He felt like a man in a foreign country who suddenly hears a traveller speaking English, or who catches the smell of codfish chowder after years of curried lamb. He hadn’t attended a single society party since his arrival in San Francisco, and he had almost forgotten the pleasures of flirting with silly young girls, and of talking preposterous small talk with half-drunk gentlemen of wealth and position. After the way that Hannah had rejected him, and after his weeks among hardware-store managers and fussy middle-class women in Sacramento, his pride hungered for nothing more desperately than flattery from the opposite sex, and recognition from his social equals.

He stood tall, with his shoulders back and his chest well filled with air, as the footman called out: ‘Mr Andrew Hunt, and Mr Collis Edmonds!’

Through the nearest throng of black-coated husbands and jewel-bedecked wives, a small, dark-haired woman appeared, dressed in a simple but expensive dress of soft white lawn, layer upon layer, embroidered with pale-blue flowers. Her face was oval and gentle, with full lips and almost Egyptian eyes. She held out her hand to Andy and said, ‘Mr Hunt. We’re so pleased that you could come. I see you’ve brought a friend.’

Andy bowed his head. ‘I hope you don’t object, Mrs Frémont. But I guessed you’d want to get to know him sooner or later, seeing as how he’s going to make his mark on this city in any event. Mrs Frémont, this is Mr Collis Edmonds, from New York. Collis, this is Mrs Jessie Benton Frémont.’

‘Well, well,’ said Mrs Frémont, as Collis took her hand and brushed her diamond rings with a light kiss. ‘I do warrant that I’ve heard of you already, Mr Edmonds. You’ve made yourself a small reputation for — what shall I call it? — immediacy.’

‘Immediacy, ma’am?’ asked Collis, amused. He was surprised to see how young Mrs Frémont was, considering that she had been married to John Frémont more than ten years ago, when he had explored the Oregon Trail and the Rocky Mountain passes with Kit Carson and Broken Hand Fitzpatrick, and that she had helped him in those days write a best-selling book about the West. She couldn’t have been much older than thirty-one or thirty-two, and she was fresh and poised as a girl of twenty.