It was a close, humid day, and even in his light-grey travelling suit he was feeling sweaty and hot. He tugged his tall grey hat over his face as the cab rattled past the elegant black-painted railings of Henry Browne’s house so that Nathan wouldn’t recognise him, and he didn’t sit up straight again until they had passed the trees and classic Greek Revival houses of Washington Square. He looked back through the small oval window in the back of the cab’s hood and saw Nathan stepping inside Henry Browne’s front door. For the first time in his life, he felt excluded, a social outcast. He remembered Senator Stride saying, ‘Poverty is an unpleasant fact of life. I hope you’re well prepared for it.’

His next call was to Second Avenue. He asked the cab to wait on the corner of Twelfth Street, and he left his leather-and-canvas valise on the seat. Then he stepped up to the door of the Spooners’s brownstone and rapped the polished brass knocker. He felt ridiculously nervous, and he kept tugging and fiddling with his grey gloves. While he waited, the three-piece raggedy band that he had seen on Saturday, the day when he had gone out riding with Delphine and Alice, came slowly shuffling past, playing a sad oom-pah-pah tune, their frayed pants white with dust.

The mournful footman with the shiny hair answered the door. Collis handed him his card. ‘I’ve come to call on Miss Delphine.’

The footman took the card, sniffed, and said, ‘Wait, please, sir.’ He closed the door, and Collis heard him calling someone within the house. The band went oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah. The cabbie climbed down from his box and fastened a nosebag to his horse. Before he climbed back up again, he gave Collis a long, inexplicable look; the look that plain working people give to the extraordinary and peculiar rich.

If only he knew that I am poorer than he, thought Collis.

It was an interminable three minutes before the footman reopened the door, just enough to hand back Collis’s card, and say, ‘I regret Miss Delphine is indisposed. Good morning.’

He was about to close the door for good, but Collis thrust his Malacca cane into the opening and jammed it.

‘Sir, please!’ insisted the footman.

Collis pushed the door wider. ‘I don’t care whether she’s indisposed or not,’ he hissed. ‘I have to see her. Now, will you go tell her I’m here?’

‘My instructions, sir, are simply to—’

‘I’m not interested in your instructions. Just go tell her.’

The footman sighed. ‘Very well, sir. Please wait a little longer.’