The Honourable Edward Pinkerton had died before his father, Lord Parke. Though he had not been young when he died, such a frustration of life’s high purpose for him – he was an only son – had lent him the pathos of youth. Had his widow been less substantial and less palpably recent he might have passed, by the references made to him, as having died before his majority. He remained ‘Poor Edward’, embalmed like a dead child in the pity and patronage of the living. He was making a third with them, this evening as ever, his mild bewhiskered face, with that expression of awe on it with which fancy is wont to invest the pictured faces of the dead, looked out from a vast scrolled frame that overshadowed the silver-stoppered bottles on the dressing-table. A similar photograph commanded the bedroom of Rosina, his sister, to the exclusion of other relationships. Rosina sat in an armchair pulled out under the light with her work held up to her eyes, embroidering diligently. She and her sister-in-law had grown very like one another, coiffured and dressed by the same hands, worked upon from within by similar preoccupations. They were more closely allied to one another in the memory of Edward than they had either of them been to Edward himself. Somehow, up to the moment of death, Edward had eluded both of them; it was after death they had closed in relentlessly. Cherished little animosities reinforced their ties to one another; Rosina maintained to herself implacably that if she had been Edward’s wife she would have borne him children; Louisa was enough aware of this to be a little markedly generous to Rosina, who was not in a position to refuse anything that might be offered.

Mrs Pinkerton sat turning over the pages of the Tatler and talking to Rosina while she embroidered.

‘I see,’ she said, ‘the Wyntons’ girl is to be married.’

‘Ah?’ remarked Rosina, snipping with her gilt scissors. ‘Who is he?’

‘A Barre, apparently.’

‘Are there Barres? I never heard of any. Where does it say he comes from?’

‘It says here,’ replied her sister-in-law, looking at the paper closely, ‘Hampshire.’

‘There are no Barres in Hampshire,’ said Rosina definitely.

‘Then it is another of these marriages.’ They both sighed.

‘Elissa Howard,’ Mrs Pinkerton went on more cheerfully, ‘writes a very pleasant, cheerful letter. She is so considerate when one is abroad or ill. She is a woman that I always like to hear from. She is coming out next month, to Nice, you know.’

‘It will be pleasant to have Elissa within reach: one feels very isolated.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Rosina, that you don’t like the Hotel … I cannot understand how anyone can go to Nice: they say it is a kind of French Brighton.’

‘They say the Carnival is very pretty … But I dare say,’ Rosina unguardedly added, ‘that it’s more expensive than we——’