Collis was slightly taken aback. What, exactly, did she mean by ‘quite different circles’? He hoped she wasn’t trying to suggest that he patronised whorehouses and gambling dens, because if she knew about that side of his social life, then he couldn’t see that there was very much hope for any kind of love affair between them. Nice young ladies like Delphine didn’t keep company with rakes.

‘Well,’ said Collis cautiously, ‘more’s the pity.’

‘Thank you,’ replied Delphine.

There was a minute’s silence between them. Ida and Winifred, although they were making sure that they kept half an ear on everything that was going on, were now engaged in running down Esmé Blunt, the wife of the art dealer, for her dreadful taste in dinner guests, and that withering cascade of criticism would occupy them for the next twenty minutes at least.

‘Do you ride?’ Collis asked Delphine.

She shook her head. ‘Not much in the city. But when we go to Larchmont, I like to. I’m looking forward to getting out of New York this year, aren’t you?’

‘I was until now,’ said Collis.

Delphine smiled a little. Her lips were very full and sensual, in spite of her cool manners, and Collis couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to press a kiss on them, and then to part them with the tip of his tongue. She was so damned pretty, and now, in the heat of the restaurant, he could smell the fragrance she wore, an essence of jonquils. A flowery, tiny, yellowy fragrance, like Delphine herself.

‘You don’t have to flatter me for the sake of it,’ she said. ‘I’m not a child.’

Collis laughed. She had caught him off balance at first, but now he was beginning to understand her. She didn’t know much about him, but she could see what kind of a man he was, with his fashionably casual clothes and his suave manner, and she was teasing him. That made him adore her even more. If there was one thing on this earth that aroused him, it was a woman who teased.

‘I can see for myself that you’re not a child,’ he told her. ‘You’re the most charming young woman I’ve seen in this city all year, and that’s why I’m flattering you.’

‘Does this kind of talk work well for you, usually?’ she asked.

‘Usually?’

‘I mean, with other ladies. Are they impressed, or do they simply smile and twirl their parasols and give you coquettish little smiles?’

‘The way you are now?’

Delphine smiled. ‘Yes, if you like.’

‘So you’re not impressed?’

‘Am I supposed to be?’