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‘There was this letter,’ Cicely said. ‘It said such wonderful things – you wouldn’t have believed it.’

‘What sort of things?’ asked Lionel Stephens.

‘That she was Truth because she was Beauty and Beauty because she was Truth and that there was going to be a war and he was going to gird his loins and fight for her sake.’

Lionel Stephens looked serious. ‘Where did she find this letter?’

‘He gave it to her. John, the nice footman who was here a minute ago. He wrote it and gave it to her.’

‘Do be careful, he’ll hear.’ Olivia was standing by the fire facing Cicely and Lionel.

‘He’s taking lunch out to the beaters. But really though, don’t you think it’s romantic? She couldn’t believe it. He’d never done anything like that before. It was quite unlike him, she said.’

‘Perhaps someone else wrote it for him,’ suggested Lionel.

‘But who? Sometimes the village people do ask the Vicar to write a letter for them when they can’t do it themselves, but can you imagine Mr Fortescue producing anything so poetic?’

‘It sounds a little overdone to me,’ said Lionel. ‘What would you think if you were written such a letter? Would you be pleased?’

‘Pleased? I should be too fascinated.’

‘And you?’ Lionel asked Olivia.

‘I should be dreadfully embarrassed.’

‘Why?’

‘I should feel ashamed. I should know I wasn’t in the least worthy of it.’

‘Wouldn’t you be secretly just a little pleased?’

She shook her head, smiling, a little flushed. She would have liked it he thought, I ought to have sent it.

‘Ellen was pleased,’ said Cicely.

She saw her grandmother looking at her across the room. Minnie had an uncanny capacity to listen to other people’s conversations while appearing to give undivided attention to her own. Knowing this, Cicely understood immediately from an almost imperceptible shake of Minnie’s head that she was to change the subject. Even Cicely did not ignore that kind of directive from her grandmother.

‘But you haven’t told us what this morning’s bag was,’ she said at once to Lionel. ‘Were there plenty of birds about?’

There were certain subjects one did not talk about because they were not amusing. Minnie had had to speak to Cicely before about bringing Ellen and her affairs into the conversation. Whoever could be supposed to want to talk about servants?

Sir Randolph was saying, ‘Can’t we sit down?’

‘Oh he’d like to have nothing but a sandwich,’ Minnie said. ‘When I first came here they had nothing but hard little sandwiches and a glass of beer. Standing up, in the rain. It took me years of nagging to get him to change.’

‘I daresay a certain Royal guest was quite a support in that way,’ said Lord Lilburn (rather sycophantically, Minnie’s daughter-in-law Ida thought).

‘He liked a proper lunch.’ But her smile, though fond, was brief; it did not encourage further conversation on the subject. Bob Lilburn had not been part of that set – he was too young for one thing – and Minnie only cared for reminiscences with others of the late King’s intimates – or rather, such others as had been her friends, for there were one or two whose names even now Minnie did not like to hear mentioned, one or two whom she considered to have been disloyal, even treacherous, and though the dreadful details of their offences were never these days enumerated, certain now ageing – indeed in one notorious case deceased – ladies were by no means forgiven. Minnie, a good friend, was not one to forget an enemy.