‘You must make a special journey,’ said Aline. ‘Without any doubt at all. 38, Princes Gardens. That’s her address. What was it she said to me about small red moustaches? I wish I could remember – bruising one’s lips on a firey-blossomed cactus, was that it?’

Fearing that all this might be getting out of hand, and leaving Harry Stamp expostulating delightedly to a straight-faced Aline, Minnie turned to Gilbert Hartlip on her other side.

‘Have you noticed how easy it is to have the most outrageous conversations at dinner? Everybody is so busy being polite to their immediate neighbours no one has time to listen further a field. Have you observed my little granddaughter at all? She’s becoming quite a flirt.’

‘I don’t suppose that pleases her mother.’

‘No, but I never think a grandmother’s advice has to be as responsible as a mother’s, do you? I tell her she should be as naughty as she likes – within the bounds of propriety of course – and as cruel and heartless to young men as she cares to be. It will be such fun for her to remember afterwards, don’t you know.’

Her benign glance wandered from Cicely’s animated face to Olivia’s fuller and more serious countenance, which at that moment was turned towards Lionel Stephens with a questioning expression which yet held, on the grounds of nothing more than perfect proportion and moulding, complexion, colour, and the light and shadow thrown onto it by the shaded candles on the table in front of her, a kind of authority, and with it and because of it a kind of reserve.

Lionel had been so delighted at finding himself seated next to her that he had been momentarily disconcerted, and had covered his confusion by talking first to Aline Hartlip who was sitting next to him on the other side. He had been placed next to Olivia at almost every meal since his arrival, and his disorientation was caused by the thought that this might have been because Olivia had asked Minnie for such an arrangement. Minnie had in fact needed no prompting; she loved beauty, and considered the furtherance of romance between the possessors of it the least of the services she could perform for it, but Lionel was ready to seize on anything which might seem to show some awareness on Olivia’s part of what had happened, of the event in which they shared. He could not believe that she could continue to meet his eyes and not recognize the truth which was written in them.

Minor pleasantries having been exchanged with Aline, he turned to Olivia, watching for an opportunity to join her conversation with Philip Ormston who was on her other side (this was when Aline began to tease Harry Stamp), and hearing mention of the Russian ballet managed, by the mildest mention of Stravinsky, discreetly to insert himself into the discussion, in which before long, Cicely having claimed Philip’s support in a disagreement with Tibor Rakassyi over the opposing advantages of hunting in Ireland and in Leicestershire, they were left alone.