He went back into the house, leaving Collis alone at the door once more. The cab driver, watching him philosophically, lit up a clay pipe and contentedly puffed away at it. If a gentleman was damn fool enough to pay him for sitting here feeding his horse and smoking a fill of tobacco, that was quite all right by him.

It was Winifred Spooner who came to the door next. She was flustered, and dressed in bright emerald green. Collis bowed, and took her hand to kiss it, which flustered her even more.

‘Mr Edmonds. How nice to see you. I’m really afraid that Delphine—’

Collis squeezed her hand gently. ‘You don’t have to make social excuses, Mrs Spooner. I know quite well what’s happened. But I do ask that you let me speak to Delphine, if only for just a few moments.’

‘I regret that my husband—’

‘Please, Mrs Spooner. No one need know.’

Winifred rubbed her hands anxiously and bit at her lips. ‘Well, if you promise to be very brief. No more than a few minutes. My husband was quite adamant that you weren’t to be let into the house, you see. On no account, he said.’

Collis followed her into the small anteroom where he had waited before. It was very close and warm in there, and he took out his handkerchief to dab the perspiration from his forehead. He supposed there was something to be said for being poor; he wouldn’t have to wear a high collar and a vest any more, and spend all his time in suffocating drawing-rooms.

Winifred invited him to sit down, but he was too nervous to do so for long. After she had left to fetch Delphine, he circled the room, measuring the rug as he went, stopping every now and then to pick up an ornament or a book, and put it down again. For a while, he examined himself in the gilded mirror over the fireplace, and he thought how expressionless he looked, compared with how torn and damaged he felt. His white wing collar was immaculate, his grey silk cravat perfect. Perhaps the very perfection of his image was what was wrong. When you were wealthy, when you were confident, you didn’t need to look as if you’d stepped from a fashion plate in a quarterly magazine.

He was still staring at himself when a soft voice said, ‘Collis,’ and he turned around to see Delphine standing at the door. Her dark curls were hanging loose around her shoulders, and she was dressed in a plain day gown of pale-blue silk, decorated only with embroidered flowers around the bodice. The gown was cut quite low, so that the swell of her rounded breasts was showing; and between them, in her cleavage, was resting a small cross of pearls and amethysts.