During the busy years with King Edward he had not seen a great deal of Sir Randolph. Minnie had been his friend and bridge partner, his ally in the sometimes demanding task of keeping the Sovereign amused. Sir Randolph had been the husband in the background, the wry accommodating country squire who produced the occasional unexpected witticism or abstruse piece of information, and had the capacity to offer once or twice a year an excellently organized shooting party at which he seemed only too pleased to be, as he frequently put it himself, the head gamekeeper. It was only after the King’s death that Sir Reuben had come to know and like Minnie’s husband. Through him he had come to admire a sub-section of the eternally fascinating English class system with which he had not previously been so familiar. He had known grandees, such of the high aristocracy who were intimates of the King’s, and he had known naturally the financial world of the City, the bankers and merchant princes, but he had not much come across the country gentry, though he was familiar with their historic role. He saw them now as a class which could command his sympathy. He saw Sir Randolph as a representative of an admirable way of life, now threatened by forces which he himself had done a certain amount to encourage. What could have been more appropriate than that some of his own gains should have been brought in as reinforcements? He could have bought a country estate – there were plenty up for sale – and his son could have inherited it, together with the millions to sustain it in sufficient style.

At this point in Sir Reuben’s imaginings a vagueness sometimes crept in. He was not sure how he would wish a son of his in such circumstances to behave. Should he become totally assimilated, should he ride, shoot, fish, sit on the Rural District Council, administer English justice as a magistrate, marry the daughter of a neighbouring squire? Or should he remember his ancestors in the Polish ghetto, forswear baptism into the Christian Church, observe the feast and fast days of an alien faith? Although Sir Reuben was rationally inclined to the former view, the latter appealed to his imagination. It was perhaps fortunate that it was a dilemma he would never have to resolve. Thinking about it had led him more than once to wonder whether there might not be an easier way to satisfy his desires in this direction.

He had many god-children. The small matter of his belonging to a different faith had not prevented his practical English friends from placing theoretically at least several of their offspring under his spiritual surveillance. The benefits they anticipated being in fact financial (and to be discovered on the reading of his will), those of his god-children who were not girls were younger sons. Some of them had little in the way of prospects, everything being destined for the elder son, and if one among them had shown signs of becoming an appropriate heir Sir Reuben would have been glad enough to have looked around for an estate, broached the matter in due course with the parents, taken an interest in the boy; but the fact was that none of them particularly appealed to him, pleasant enough though most of them were, and he did not want to make a mistake, so darkening his declining years. He waited.