The cab plunged downwards towards Elizabeth Bay and she called out instructions to the driver. He pulled up at the house and leaped down to open the door and pull down the step. At the same time the front door opened and Alice burst out, hastening to her with an unfurled umbrella though the sky was still clear, perhaps a cloud or two rolling in now from the west, but there was certainly no need for the umbrella. And Eleanor said, rather curtly for her elation had faded now, ‘No, Alice, it is not raining. Please take it away. Though it is rather cold. I shall go up to my room directly. Is there a fire lit? Then do so, and I should like a warm drink, perhaps a coffee.’

She went into the house and disgorged hat, gloves and coat and Alice dropped first one glove and then the other, then, realising she had left the front door wide open and the cold air coming in, attempted to close it and only succeeded in dropping all the items she held. She seemed close to tears. This was irritating, for one does not want a maid who cries.

‘Your clumsiness does not improve, Alice, though I had fervently hoped it would,’ sighed her mistress, who at that moment loathed the enforced dullness of forever maintaining a house, of forever maintaining a front before the servants. ‘Help me off with these boots. We encountered the worst kind of streets this evening and were obliged to walk some distance and I fear it has spoiled the leather.’

‘Yes, madam. And, madam, Mr Dunlevy is in the drawing room,’ said Alice.

‘Eleanor.’

Alasdair called to her from the drawing room and she stood up, the boots now removed, a soft pair of house shoes in their place. Eleanor smoothed down her lavender skirt and studied herself in the mirror that filled one wall of the hallway. She remembered she had felt elated in the cab.

‘Thank you, Alice, you may go,’ she said, and she waited for the girl to curtsy and depart before entering the room. ‘Alasdair.’

He stood with his back to her at the fireplace, though no fire was lit, and perhaps he had not long returned for the room was cold, his gloves laid carelessly on an occasional table as though he had come home in a great hurry and there had been no time for Alice to put away his things. He turned and studied her silently, as she had just studied herself in the mirror, and under his gaze she swept into the room and sank down on a chair.

He said nothing, though he had called for her, and she could not quite read him; there was a tension that she recognised, for it had been present a great deal recently, something held tightly in check.

‘You attended the anti-bill meeting this evening,’ he said at last.

‘I did.’