Veronica laughed tolerantly. ‘In love, if you prefer it,’ she continued. ‘I suppose as he’s middle-aged that that is rather more expressive.’

Sydney, feeling as though she had caught Milton unawares, felt rather ashamed of herself. The realization that came as those awkward-sounding words left Veronica’s lips was as sudden as though that scene on the plateau (which had disconnected itself from the rest of her memories) had not occurred. She had so entirely divested that ill-staged proposal of all the traditional trappings that she had come to account for it merely as a more blatant of his occasional solecisms. They had frequently met since then without awkwardness, without the ghost of an echo.

Sydney could never hear any mention of love without an envious pang for its object, and now, as though feeling came quicker than thought, she felt this pang sharply before she had had time to say to herself, ‘He is in love with me.’

‘I dare say he may propose, you know,’ said Veronica maternally, with an air of having their situation well in hand. ‘That will be awful for you: he’s a darling old thing – not so very old, either,’ she amended politely – so politely that Sydney realized she must have transgressed an etiquette in depreciating Victor. ‘He is one of the few men,’ said Veronica with a sigh, ‘who can talk intellectually to me and make me talk intellectually without feeling a fool.’

Sydney longed to overhear them. ‘He and I,’ she said, ‘can’t talk to one another. He keeps tripping up and tripping me up like a bad dancer.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Veronica, ‘under the circumstances what can you expect?’ And Sydney shrugged her impatience at this conception of things. Veronica sitting down at the dressing-table leant on her elbows, curling her feet round the rungs of the chair. She amused herself for some moments by squinting horribly at her own reflection, then she took up Sydney’s puff and began thoughtfully to powder her face. ‘Talking of types,’ said she, ‘none of us seem to be making much impression on young Ronald, do we? Did you ever see such a Mummy’s boy! Oh, I beg your pardon, Sydney, I was forgetting Mrs Kerr was a friend of yours.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I must say, I do think she’s odd about Ronald. She doesn’t seem to have taken any notice of him for years, and now they go about all over the place like Romeo and Juliet. Of course, I dare say he makes a fearful fuss of her. These selfish mothers get the best of it all the way. I shall be a selfish mother.’

‘As a matter of fact, you won’t,’ Sydney said with a flash of insight.