Minnie took the piece of lace and spread it out on her knee to see the intricate pattern.

‘What a touching story.’

‘But what shall I do with it, do you think? It’s too good to put on a petticoat or an under-bodice and there isn’t enough for a pair of sleeves.’

‘You’re so clever at that sort of thing. Those shoes with lace appliqué you were wearing last night were too fascinating. If it were me I expect I’d just trim the bodice of a dress with it. Haven’t you got anything being made you could use it on?’

‘Well yes, but I was thinking of not getting in touch with my dressmaker for a bit. I may have to be a bit elusive to one or two people of that kind for a month or so.’

‘Bills?’

‘My confounded bookmaker mainly. I’ve never known a man so stingy with credit. He knows he’ll get it in the end.’

‘I could probably let you have a little something for a few weeks if it would help.’

‘My dear, you are too sweet, I couldn’t possibly. I can’t bear looting my friends. If only I hadn’t had such a rotten Cesarowitch. I can’t tell Gilbert because I promised to give it up. I could let you have it back very soon, that’s the only thing, because he pays me part of my dress allowance on the first of December.’

‘Of course I can let you have something till then. It’s so horrid having to worry about money.’ Minnie reached for her cheque book, wiped her pen on her green leather pen-wiper, dipped it into the ink and held it poised.

‘One? Two?’

‘You’re too sweet. If you could make it two.’

Minnie filled in the cheque for two hundred pounds, saying as she did so, ‘What about a hand of whist? We shall get quite enough fresh air this afternoon and we’ve plenty of time before we need to change.’

‘Divine. As long as you don’t make it double or quits.’

‘No, no, no,’ said Minnie, ringing the bell for someone to put out the card table. ‘Gambling at cards before lunch? What immorality. Certainly nothing over sixpence a point.’

All morning the sound of shooting came intermittently from the Park, moving gradually closer to the thick belt of woods which descended to the river. A breeze had come up, and carried the salvoes of shot across the orderly landscape of the Park to the garden, where the men still working on the herbaceous border heard them, and through the window of Olivia’s room, which she had opened to let in the smell of autumn with the sunlit air: she did not listen, concentrating instead on the tale Cicely had to tell her. The sound of shots carried no message of alarm; it was nearly two hundred years since a party of redcoats had skirmished in those woods with a hopelessly ill-organized group of supporters of the Old Pretender; more than two hundred and fifty since an ancestor of Sir Randolph’s, surprised by an ambush in a hedgerow just beyond the confines of the Park, gave his life for his King and became thereby the inspiration for one of the most perfect pieces of prose in Clarendon’s History of the Civil War. The sacrifice now was not of men but of birds, handsome creatures, bred up in every luxury a bird could wish for by Glass and his men, fed, protected from predators, set loose for a few months of life in what it was to be presumed might be a pheasant’s Eden, only to be cast forth by a whole host of rustic angels, bearing not so much flaming swords as sticks and whistles, forced to take to the air reluctantly – heavy birds, a flight of more than a few feet exhausts them – forced up and out to meet a burst of noise and a quick death in that bright air.