Miss Fitzgerald, standing on tiptoe, peeped over the lace blind through the glass of the drawing-room doors, sighed and shook her head. The room presented a too unbroken front of matron-hood. She was expressing her feelings in dumb show for the benefit of nobody in particular, as is the habit of lonely, self-conscious women. She observed, still to nobody in particular, ‘Well, I suppose if piggy won’t get over the stile, I’ll have to walk.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ asked Colonel Duperrier.

‘Oh, nothing,’ said Miss Fitzgerald, startled, and began her painful ascent. Her room was on the highest floor. She disappeared.

A girl with fair hair proved on closer inspection to be one of the Lawrences. She was hunched over a writing-table, trying to write a letter with a Hotel pen that screeched and staggered. She leant on her elbows, tilting her chair up. At an impatient movement from her, two or three sheets of letter-paper, thinly covered, fluttered to the ground. ‘Oh, Lord!’ she exclaimed, and dived after them.

‘Let me!’ said Colonel Duperrier, hurrying across the lounge.

‘Got it, thanks,’ replied Joan Lawrence, once more arranging the sheets round her elbow so that the slightest movement must again disturb them. Her writing was enormous, and watching her absently he could not help seeing ‘the very limit’, ‘macaroni’ and ‘torn it’. He looked quickly away.

She twirled her pen and stared at the nib resignedly. ‘Pen’s the limit.’

‘It looks it. You might find a better one in the drawing-room.’

‘I dare say. Thanks very much, but I’m not going into the drawing-room.’ She was being friendly and pleasant with him; they both laughed. When she laughed, the sunburnt copper-pink of her cheeks deepened. She was not so difficult, after all, to distinguish from her sisters.

‘Oh, come,’ said he, ‘you’ve never turned your back on don or devil! Go in and look for a pen. They won’t eat you.’

‘If you were a kind man, you would.’

‘Look here, take my Onoto.’

‘Oh no, thanks. Nothing but grief and bitterness comes of borrowing other people’s Onotos. Do go and get me that pen. I dare you …!’ She drew down her upper lip and stared at him with solemnity. Both liking each other better than ever, they laughed again. He was a tall brown man with long legs, a little younger than the Lawrences’ father. His hair was going white round the temples; strictly speaking, it was pepper and salt. He was one of their finest tennis players, and waltzed beautifully in the old-fashioned manner, holding one gingerly. His wife was the limit; she was one of the drawing-room set.

‘Go on, I dare you to!’ repeated Joan.

He stood a moment longer, tugging his short moustache, then braced himself, magnificently squaring his shoulders. ‘Oh, very well,’ said he. He hesitated in front of the lace-hung doors, whose appearance seemed to appal him.