‘Even swampy land with no drainage and no natural water some ten miles from the city, what? But no matter—so long as one could convince an enthusiastic and train-gorged public that a railway was coming, the speculators queued up to purchase it and paid whatever was asked. And if most of those proposed and promised railways failed to get built or languished for years in parliamentary debate or were thwarted by lobbyists demanding other routes and different lines, what of it, eh, Dunlevy?’

‘In case you have failed to notice it, we do have a working rail network,’ Alasdair replied in a tight voice, ‘and a fine and extensive tram network.’

‘Which we are still paying off and have been in recession because of ever since.’ And Booker-Reid laughed as though this was the greatest source of amusement to him. He signalled the maid to top up the gentlemen’s glasses.

Alasdair tried, and failed, to look as if he were not annoyed.

‘Have we heard anything more from these so-called anarchists?’ enquired Henry Rothe. ‘I have been in the north with the Prem so I fear I may have missed something.’ In any other man, this would have been conceit, but Henry Rothe had no need for conceit. He had a beautiful wife and a magnificent house and a satisfactory, though not particularly taxing, parliamentary career.

His wife, speaking almost at the same moment and aiming her remark at the other two ladies, said, ‘I saw Adaline Jellicoe this morning. She was cancelling an order for a dress. It was rather sad, really. I cannot think why she did not send her maid to do it.’

And Blanche did look a little sad when she spoke of Adaline Jellicoe, who was divorcing her husband, and this was no affectation either. It suited her dramatic looks.

‘Poor Adaline,’ said Cecily Pyke desperately. ‘I do wish there was something we could do for her.’

But there was nothing they could do for her.

‘The Premier is to speak at Newcastle on Saturday,’ said Rothe. ‘I’ve declined that particular excursion—too much on—so I believe Drummond-Smith is to accompany him this time.’

Alasdair shot Henry Rothe a look of such tightly contained fury that Eleanor felt its ripples from her own side of the table. Did it matter to him so much that another man accompany the Premier and not himself? Apparently it did.

‘Alasdair’s meeting at Leichhardt descended into a riot this evening,’ she announced, because it was important the room understand her own husband’s contribution to the Federation, even if the Premier, evidently, did not.

‘Hardly that!’ Alasdair cut in, clearly irritated, though he himself had described it thus to her earlier. And as is the way at such gatherings and at such moments, the rest of the company fell silent so that his words fell with a crash they surely had not intended.