‘Besides, my dear, make a home …! Of course, it’s what one would love to do, but it nearly kills one and it’s so expensive; and when all’s said and done it’s still so uncomfortable these days with all these difficulties, one can’t expect a man to stay in it. Of course, we don’t mind in the same way about comfort, but really it is scarcely fit for oneself. So I said to my husband … he agreed … It is so broadening to the mind, isn’t it? to travel and meet people; we have been so fortunate in the hotels that were recommended to us, and we have been passed on from introduction to introduction so that we have always got to know people at once.’

‘And as for the son,’ put in another lady who had been waiting with parted lips, ‘he really may not want her. And I rather wonder about him, too. One of my boys was at school with him and said he was not at all popular. He won’t say why, of course, the Kerr boy wasn’t popular; you know what boys are, they are so reserved. But one felt, of course, that there was something. Boys, you know, are rather wonderful; they have a judgement that – well, a kind of instinct.’

‘Like dogs.’

‘Oh, my dear Mrs Hepworth …’

‘I must say, if the girl were in my charge, were a cousin of mine …’

‘Even then, though I wonder if one would be justified in interfering.’

‘It would be difficult. But I do feel strongly …’

‘Yes … yes?’

‘Well, I know of a case——’

They all broke off as the door opened and Sydney looked in nonchalantly, as though she hardly expected to find whoever she was looking for.

‘Oh, Tessa, there you are! I couldn’t think why you weren’t on your bed. We have no stamps; I have been looking for you in despair. Nobody I’ve met has a stamp and the concierge must be asleep somewhere.’

She was standing on the threshold, holding the door open so that the colder air from the lounge rushed in from behind her. She did not look as though she had been out all day; her heavy eyes and the way her hair had been pushed back from her forehead suggested that she had a headache. She was asked to come right in, if she did not mind, and shut the door after her, and she complied absently. She came and stood behind Tessa’s chair while Tessa fumbled with her note-case; they all remarked her air of not unhappy abstraction and how, like a shy, self-centred child who has been sent down into company on a message and wishes at once to escape, she remained indifferent to their presence and made no effort to speak to them. Once she put her hand out and patted Tessa’s hair idly. ‘Do hurry, darling,’ said she.