Roberta found herself shaking hands with an extremely odd couple. The Marquis of Wutherwood and Rune was sixty years of age but these years sat heavily upon him and he looked like an old man. His narrow head, sunken between high shoulders, poked forward with an air that was at once mean and aggressive. His face was colourless. The bridge of his nose was so narrow that his eyes appeared to be impossibly close-set. His mouth drooped querulously and the length of his chin, though prodigious, was singularly unexpressive of anything but obstinacy. His upper teeth projected over his under lip and hinted at a high and a narrow palate. These teeth gave him an unpleasingly feminine appearance increased by his chilly old-maidish manner, which suggested that he lived in a state of perpetual offence. Roberta found herself wondering if he could possibly be as disagreeable as he looked.

His wife was about fifty years of age. She was dark, extremely sallow, and fat. There was a musty falseness about the dank hair which she wore over her ears in sibylline coils. She painted her face, but with such inattention to detail that Roberta was reminded of a cheap print in which the colours had slipped to one side, showing the original structure of the drawing underneath. She had curious eyes, very pale, with tiny pupils, and muddy whites. They were so abnormally sunken that they seemed to reflect no light and this gave them a veiled appearance which Roberta found disconcerting, and oddly repellent. Her face had once been round but like her make-up it had slipped and now hung in folds and pockets about her lips, which were dragged down at the corners. Roberta saw that Lady Wutherwood had a trick of parting and closing her lips. It was a very slight movement but she did it continually with a faint click of sound. And in the corners of her lips there was a kind of whiteness that moved when they moved. “Henry is right,” thought Roberta. “She is disgusting.”

Lord Wutherwood greeted the Lampreys without much show of cordiality. When he saw Lady Katherine Lobe his attitude stiffened still further. He turned to his brother and in a muffled voice said: “We’re in a hurry, Charles.”

“Oh,” said Lord Charles. “Are you? Oh—well—”

“Are you?” Charlot repeated. “Not too much of a hurry, I hope, Gabriel. We never see anything of you.”

“You never come to Deepacres when we ask you, Imogen.”

“I know. We’d adore to come, especially the children, but you know it’s so frightfully expensive to travel, even in England. You see we can’t all get into one car—”

“The fare, third-class return, is within the reach of most people.”

“Miles beyond us, I’m afraid,” said Charlot with a charming air of ruefulness. “We’re cutting down everything. We never budge from where we are.”

Lord Wutherwood turned to Henry.

“Enjoy your trip to the Côte d’Azur?” he asked. “Saw your photograph in one of these papers. In my day we didn’t strip ourselves naked and wallow in front of press photographers but I suppose you like that sort of thing.”