Mrs Kerr and a party of friends who must have been having tea together farther down the garden passed by and went out talking and laughing, and Ronald strayed after them, looking slightly disorientated. His panama was folded under his arm; he glanced sidelong at each of the tables under his lashes, prepared to swerve wide of them if anyone hailed him or put out a hand. Colonel Duperrier, though he did not take to the youth, was vaguely sorry for him; he wasn’t, like Master Ammering, either plump, complacent, or noisy, and his idleness might well be a phase and had (like Colonel Duperrier’s own) the grace of dejection. He made, therefore, an encouraging sound in his throat and pulled back a chair from the table invitingly, while Eileen, who seemed to find Ronald’s manner of going by them provocative, shouted, ‘Hi, Ronald!’ so sharply that everyone jumped.

Having affected their capture, they all three smiled at Ronald with the anxious benevolence, the slightly embarrassed solicitude which it seemed a gift of his own to inspire in all circles, and which had made, for some reason, his company out here particularly sought after. He was asked everywhere, to bridge, to dinner at other hotels, to the Lee-Mittisons’ coffee-parties, and went, under some delicate indirect maternal compulsion, with always the same air of being strung up for martyrdom to the occasion as the young Sebastian of painters is strung to a tree. He did not look at present a happy boy as, leaning forward, slack wrists crossed on a knee, he gazed with an unreserved attentiveness which they found still further embarrassing from one Lawrence’s face to the other.

‘It is neither of you, I think, that I am to congratulate on an engagement to Mr Ammering?’

‘No, thank Heaven!’ said Eileen emphatically.

‘Oh!’ said Ronald, surprised, ‘but wouldn’t you like to marry him? I thought he seemed so popular here.’

‘He is an exceedingly lucky young man,’ pronounced Colonel Duperrier.

‘Of course,’ agreed Ronald politely. ‘I have just congratulated Miss Warren, too,’ he added, ‘and Mr Milton, whom I met out walking together. They both looked very much surprised and rather offended. Surely I haven’t done the wrong thing, have I – they are engaged?’

‘Everyone knows,’ said Eileen, ‘and I don’t suppose Sydney likes that; it isn’t select. But you ought to know something about it, anyway; she will have told your mother.’