‘I’m so bad at playing the Irish whistle,’ said Cicely, rushing as she thought to the opposite extreme (her mother recognized it as being nothing of the kind). ‘I wish I could play it though, I love all that, and the fiddling …’

Tibor had always liked animated girls. She seemed at the same time, compared to the girls he knew at home, almost ethereal, all spirit – only the spirit was the spirit of fantasy and laughter. He thought of her dancing down the long passages of the gloomy palace above the Danube, gleaming at him across the crowded formalities of Viennese receptions, galloping across the plain on hunting expeditions.

‘When I go to stay with my uncle, who is a Russian Grand Duke, we go wolf-hunting in the forest with a pack of Borzois.’

Her eyes enormous at the thought of the romance of it, she only breathed an appreciative ‘Oh!’

His family, Tibor thought, would be quite well disposed towards a marriage with an English girl of good family. Perhaps this evening if they played games after dinner, there might be a chance to drop a hint, see how she responded?

‘You’re looking pleased with yourself,’ Aline murmured to him from his other side. ‘You are making a face like a rose bud.’

Cornelius Cardew strode through Oxfordshire, and the feeling of elation which had possessed him as he left Sir Randolph and made his way through the unfriendly sportsmen, slowly faded. By the time he reached the hamlet of Cowfold a mile or two from the borders of the City of Oxford, it had evaporated altogether; he could not imagine what could have induced him to entertain such feelings. He supposed that as usual it had been a question of personalities. He had noticed in himself more than once a tendency to take a liking to an adversary; it was regrettable. Things were achieved, he knew, advances made, advantages won, by people banding together for the good of a cause and once banded remembering which band they belonged to. Just because he could not help feeling a certain sympathy with anyone who confessed to wanting to write a polemical pamphlet and have it privately printed, there was no reason to waver in his loyalties. Cornelius was opposed to blood sports, Sir Randolph Nettleby therefore was not; they were on opposite sides. Cornelius was opposed to private ownership of land, Sir Randolph most palpably was not; therefore they were irrevocably divided.

Nevertheless, nevertheless – for Cornelius was a firm believer in the power of persuasion – was there not, or might there not be, some common ground? Sir Randolph regretted the decline of rural life, the coming disappearance as he forsaw it of a fullness and vigour of existence which might be expected in the face of the materalism of the new age to become an absolute loss. It was only as to the method of retrieving the loss before it was too late that they differed. Might not Sir Randolph be induced to consider the problem from a different point of view, a point of view it had to be admitted in absolute opposition to his own interest; but then any man, Cornelius optimistically considered, any man who wanted to write a polemical pamphlet must be of a philosophical turn of mind, and therefore must be capable of seeing things not only and exclusively from the point of view of his own interest. They should have talked more about the land. Cornelius, walking now between low hedges and with the towers and spires of Oxford already in sight, hesitated, felt in the pockets of his Norfolk jacket, almost turned back. He had a pamphlet on Land Reform. It would only take him an hour to retrace his steps. Or would it be better to write? He paused between the grassy verges, despising his own irresolution; then thought of a crust of bread, a pint of ale, some cheese.