‘Surely that is rather bitter?’ asked James Milton, looking on solicitously.

‘Yes,’ said she with a wry face, wiping her mouth, ‘it was very bitter!’ She turned crimson and began to laugh awkwardly. ‘Such an extraordinary thing to do: I do do extraordinary things sometimes … without thinking … when I’m thinking hard.’

James Milton, who did think this was an extraordinary thing to have done, was silent. She glanced shamefacedly at her tooth-marks in the orange, then guiltily up at the windows of the Hotel, then she wiped the orange and tucked it quietly away behind her.

‘Look!’ cried out James Milton considerately. ‘There’s Mrs Kerr again, out on her balcony.’

‘So she is – how nice she looks up there! You know, my friend Miss Pym is so fond of her, she says she is marvellously sympathetic. She is certainly an unusual woman, but so very charming. She is very much criticized here by a certain set, but then I am afraid some women have very small minds. Did you hear, her son is coming out next week? We are so glad, it will be delightful for her.’

‘I say, is he really? I’m glad.’

‘We are wondering,’ continued Miss Fitzgerald, ‘what he and Sydney Warren will say to each other.’

‘Really?’ said James Milton, whose mind had leapt at once to this.

‘Not of course that I mean anything … well, you know, sentimentally. The boy is hardly grown up. No, I mean she has been so much in possession, really rather monopolizing Mrs Kerr, who of course is incapable of not being nice to anybody and is so patient and sympathetic and good.’ Miss Fitzgerald sighed. ‘She’s been victimized …’

Later on, when Milton had followed Miss Fitzgerald into the dining-room, he stared with renewed curiosity at the back of Miss Warren’s head across the dining-room, as though he expected its shape and colour to be somehow different, or expected her to disclose her whole self to him in some gesture or attitude. He sat at his lonely table crumbling his bread exaltedly and wondering how soon Ronald could possibly arrive. He promised himself that, if Ronald were not delayed, it should be possible for him in a fortnight or even ten days to know Sydney absolutely. Then he had to recollect how unfriendly to him she had shown herself, and wonder whether being thrown back on his society would tend to make her like him better. Tessa’s bright, vague eyes surprised him in their wandering; he smiled and nodded.

‘Mr Milton keeps on looking at us,’ whispered Tessa to Sydney. ‘I do wonder what he wants.’