The maid’s elongated face came into Mrs Rolleston’s mind, and her thin nose and her long front teeth. Trying not to see it, she brushed her hair in front of the looking-glass, gazing instead at her own reflection. ‘There’s a telegram after coming, ma’am’: it was that same maid who had held it towards her, standing in the drawing-room in her afternoon black. She hadn’t opened it until the girl had gone, until she’d heard her footsteps passing through the hall. ‘This isn’t true,’ she’d whispered before she read the message, knowing what the message contained. In the drawing-room she had sat with the piece of paper between her fingers, and then had torn it in half and then into quarters and then into tiny scraps. A chaffinch had flown through the open French windows and she had watched it flying about the room.

She carried the lamp to the table beside her bed and turned the wick down. When Villana had come into the drawing-room the bird was perched on a picture. She had told Villana immediately that her father was no longer alive, and later Lionel had come to where she sat on the sofa, with the torn-up telegram still in her lap. The news had been sent by the regiment, she explained to them. John James, probably not far from where the death had occurred, would have been informed by the regiment also: when there was a war you had always to be prepared for news from the regiment. She had gone with his children to the study where every day he had read the Irish Times, where his things were as he’d left them-the shotgun on the wall, the fishing-rods in the corner, the bric-à-brac on the ochre-coloured table cover. ‘I don’t know what we’ll do,’ she said, unable to think of anything else to say.