“He has a collection,” said Stephanie, causing Brett to jump at the echo of his thought, “down in Kent. It’s rather odd, that. His house isn’t far from my aunt’s farm. Only how I found out was when I was helping Mrs. Millet, his secretary to tidy one of the cupboards in his room. She went out, and he came in, and started talking away to me. He’s awfully sweet, you know. He asked me what I was doing at Christmas—this was only the other morning—and I told him we always went down to this farm at Pettinge. ‘Pettinge, near Folkestone?’ he said. ‘But that’s only a few miles from my own home. You know Barton, Miss Cole?’ and so on, and so on. He said I must call during the holiday and he’d show me his collection, said it would be interesting and useful to me. But I don’t suppose he really meant it.”

“Don’t you?” said Brett. “I do. I think he really wants you to learn.” He didn’t say what else he was thinking, that if Stephanie had been less attractive the offer would never have been made. “You’re not unseen down among the cases and cupboards, and you won’t always stay there. By the way, what is a Chaffers?”

“A big fat reference book of marks on porcelain. Why?”

“Nothing. After all, they have to watch you for a while, to make sure you’re not completely dense or butterfingered, before they let you—”

“Oh, don’t, don’t!” she interrupted impatiently. “I’ve had all that from Daddy. Probation, work your way up, learning the ropes, Rome not built in a day, et cetera. I suppose by the time I’m an old crow of forty they might let me into the holy of holies.”

“More coffee?” asked Brett.

“No, thank you. It was awfully nice coffee, though.” She put her cup on the tray, and her eyes rested, not for the first time, on the photograph of Christina which stood inconspicuously enough on the bookcase. “Is that your wife?”

“A photograph of her,” said Brett, idiotically.

She shot him a well-merited look. “Is she English?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “So dark!”

“She doesn’t look exactly like that now,” Brett volunteered. “She had her hair cut short a few weeks ago.”

“What a shame! It suits her in that bun.”

“I’m sorry you haven’t met her,” said Brett. “She’s gone to hear the new cantata. Has Geoffrey mentioned it?”

“If he has, I wasn’t listening. Didn’t you want to go too?”

“I was going, but I came home too late.”

She looked at him in frank curiosity. “What’s your work?”

“Guess!”

“That’s just the trouble,” she complained, “I can’t. Does your wife work too?”

“She’s a singer.”

“Good heavens! What sort of singer?”

“Chiefly of opera. She’s a mezzo-soprano. You can ask Geoffrey if he’s heard of Christina Gallen, but he may not know her. She was in Germany till this summer, and she hasn’t sung here since she came home, just taken a rest and looked about her. But I think she’s getting tired of doing nothing.”