‘Can’t keep up with the costs, he was saying.’

‘Of course he can’t keep up with the costs, none of us can keep up with the costs. I’m mortgaged up to the hilt, I can tell you. Half my property is mortgaged. Who’s he found to let it to then? Some damned newspaper proprietor I suppose. Somebody who’ll do nothing but entertain his friends from Town and not give a thought to his obligations. The countryside needs all the help it can get in times like this. I’d never have thought old Harry Stamp would run out on it. What’s he going to do then? Live in Dieppe, I suppose, like the Martins. Good God. In a boarding-house, I suppose.’

‘I don’t know that it’s as bad as that. I think he was only talking of a few months, not more.’

‘I should hope not. Don’t suppose he can even speak French, Harry Stamp. He was always thick-headed. The boy’s the same, isn’t he, Marcus?’

He waited for his grandson, who was walking a few yards behind him.

‘Isn’t he? Harry Stamp’s grandson? Isn’t he pretty fat-headed?’

‘I hardly see him. He’s older than me. He’s usually drunk whenever I do see him. Or fighting.’

‘No discipline at Eton these days,’ said Sir Randolph, his good humour, which had been shaken by the news of Harry Stamp’s intended defection, apparently quite restored by the thought of the ineluctable genetic imperfections of the Stamp line.

At eleven o’clock, John the footman carried a silver tray into the morning room. On it was a bottle of Vichy water, together with one glass and a plate of the special ginger biscuits from Biarritz of which Minnie was so fond. Having finished her domestic interviews, Minnie, as she usually was by that time of the morning, was sitting at her desk. Her letters today, however, held nothing of particular interest to her, and she was glad enough to be interrupted by Aline.

‘I knew I should find you here. Am I interrupting you? Are you halfway through a divinely elegant billet-doux?’

‘My dear, I am much too old for that sort of thing. I do nothing but stare at bills.’

‘Don’t talk to me of bills. Look, this is what I came to show you. Isn’t it divine?’

She held out a piece of delicate cream-coloured lace.

‘Too pretty. Nottingham?’

‘Bruges. An old admirer, the sweetest thing. A Norwegian, can you imagine? I went with my sister and a governess years ago, when I was a girl and Dolly was still in the school-room. We stayed in a pension and were supposed to be improving our French and he was staying there too before going into the Army and he quite fell for us. We used to go for bicycle rides by the canal. I think it was Dolly he really fell for. She had such lovely golden hair, right down her back – of course she didn’t use to put it up then, and he used to gaze and gaze at it – and then of course she died, poor darling, of that beastly diphtheria, and he still writes to me every now and then even after all these years. The other day he sent me this because he was going through Belgium for some reason – I don’t know why, he’s an Army officer now – but it’s pretty, isn’t it?’