‘Very mildly, I do beg you, if you do. I’m quite sure it must have been a mistake, a very rare one.’

Gilbert had already diverged and begun to walk over towards Lionel and Olivia who were following the others, slightly apart from them but with now hardly an outward sign of their emotions.

Sir Randolph said to Bob Lilburn, ‘I really can’t understand what’s happened to Gilbert. He seems very jumpy today.’

‘If you ask me I think Aline’s playing him up a bit.’

‘Aline’s been playing him up for years,’ said Sir Randolph impatiently. ‘It’s never made him jumpy before.’

Daniel Glass walked with his father to the next covert.

‘Did you see Mr Stephens at that last stand?’ his father asked him.

Dan shook his head.

‘I was too far over.’

‘He was shooting like an angel.’

‘The birds were coming out well.’

‘As good a sport as you could wish for, that’s what we’re giving them. And they know it. I reckon we’ve got two of the best shots in England here today. And the others not much worse.’

‘Tom Harker was the stop. He’ll have got the best sight of it.’

‘He’s good Tom, damn him, not one of those that just walks along in a daze. He works, does Tom. I tell you what, next time I see either Mr Stephens or Lord Hartlip getting the best position I’ll put you opposite so you can see some of the skill, right?’

‘Thanks.’

Dan watched his father hurry on ahead to deploy his troops for the next advance. He was glad to see him so pleased with the way the day was going. Dan was pleased too – he liked the feeling of being part of a success, just as he liked the feeling of being part of a village that had been much the same for a long time and part of an Empire that he had been told at school and had found no difficulty in believing was the best there had ever been. At the same time he knew that he could never feel as secure in his assumptions as his father was. It was something to do with having one special thing. Most people didn’t have one special thing, so it was easier for them to identify themselves with whatever they found around them, but if you did have a special thing you were a little set apart, a little more self-conscious; Dan had recently become increasingly aware of this, and he was not sure whether the awareness made him pleased or sorry. He had to be some kind of scientist. There was too much to be found out in that way for it to be anything less than a lifetime’s work. And because every time he was working on something, however small and apparently simple, he always knew with certainty what observations mattered, what methods he ought to use, and what conclusions he might expect to come to, he knew perfectly well but without wanting to go into the matter or to put it into words that really it would be quite wrong of him to leave such work to other people. They could not be counted on to get it right. How he had arrived at this conclusion after no more than a few years of Nature Study with Mr Rudloe the schoolmaster and a few random conversations with such of his elders in the village who were interested in the habits of wild animals, or with Sir Randolph before and after reading such books as the latter could find for him on the beginnings of life or the structure of natural organisms, was perhaps mysterious, but that made it no less a fact. He was sure of what he had to do. The only question was whether he could do it alone.