Ignored him entirely so as not to give them the satisfaction of a public display.

I sat for a while, then left. Elliot followed me into the hall, pronged her nose at me. She made some remark about jealousy being such a common emotion, for someone who believes himself such an uncommon man.

Later, I made it clear to Meg that the boy is not welcome. No. Not a boy. He has become a man.

I’ve decided to sponsor the debate, but under my sole name. What is the purpose of variety in the species of humankind? The motion was, after all, my own design.

Concerning Meg, the girl still delivers only tidy lines, takes far greater care over her penmanship than imparting anything of any use. Laudanum in prescribed doses. Work on her flimsy memoirs. Outings to Gunter’s for pistachio ices, Hooke’s library (paragraphs and paragraphs about that) and to Richmond for turns about the park with that ape-leader, Elliot. Surely there is more to your days than that, I said. In response, she bit her lip. She thinks to rescue Meg, by feeding me these half-truths.

Everyone wants to rescue Meg.

Meanwhile, that very object of our mutual attention grows brighter and brighter now while the girl grows dull, though I suspect both moods have the same root: to wit, Mr Olaudah Cambridge. To test my suspicions, I asked the girl what she thought of him. She replied that she didn’t think much of Laddie Cambridge at all, but that in any event it is impossible to think more of him than he thinks of himself. I think she has an inkling she’s been thrown over for a new favourite. That’s Meg. A magpie’s zeal for collecting.

Talk turned again to Paradise. I asked whether she knew Boyle believed the existence of albinos proved that Adam and Eve were white, and all the other races descended from them. She shied away at the mention of albinos, as she always does, the flush coming down her face like a shade descending. Fascinating that she is pale enough to blush!

Perhaps it was the boy turning up like a bad penny that agitated me. So, I pressed her. Cruel, yes, but I have very little patience left for her impenetrable silences, or her lies.

‘I’ve had a letter from your old mistress,’ I said. ‘From Mrs Langton.’ That sent her scuttling back into her shell, blinking out at me, watching me as one might watch a fire, looking but not seeing. The news had reached Jamaica that Langton’s mulatta has ended up under my roof. Mrs Langton advises me to rid myself of her if I know what’s good for my household, but at the same time suggests she knows the whole story about the albino infant.

Let me explain.

The Comte de Buffon is credited with the theory of inter-fertility, according to which if a pair produces a child who is itself capable of having children, then both members of that pair are human. In other words, if the child of a black mother and a white father can itself produce children, black and white are members of the same human stock. Otherwise mulattos would be barren as mules. Clearly the mulatto is demonstrably fertile – witness the terceroons and quadroons and octoroons sprouting like mushrooms throughout the new world – and so it is demonstrably false to assert that blacks are not human, and therefore a catastrophic waste of time. This posed a difficulty for Langton, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere. I suppose he couldn’t turn a blind eye to it for long. Instead he proposed a series of ‘experimental matings’. I received this news on good authority, from several of the Fellows; thankfully, I could tell them by then that I had already written to him and cut the cord.