At the conclusion of the talk Eleanor had left her mother fanning herself by a window and gone in search of cooling lemonade and had, instead, found a young man. This man, a tall gangly youth inhabiting a body he seemed unused to and with a manner both self-assured and diffident, had sported a cream-coloured frockcoat and a white linen shirt as would one about to set forth himself to conquer mountains and cross deserts. She had noticed—how could she not?—his thick black hair and the lively grey eyes that had flittered restlessly about the room and settled, at last, on her. And having found her, the young man had expressed to her, in words at once eloquent and stilted, his admiration for both the celebrated professor and the lecture which he had found thrilling. Eleanor had agreed at once (though she had mostly found it dull) because that was what she had been taught to do. The young man had introduced himself as Alasdair Dunlevy, and when she had appeared in no great hurry to return to her mother he had taken the opportunity to express to her his hopes of being selected himself to join a surveying team journeying into the interior in the next few months, the only obstacle being the urgent need to raise the capital which his father, inexplicably, had refused to provide.

Eleanor had commiserated and they had married four months later as the summer had drawn to a close and the European trees in the city had shed their leaves, and instead of going off into the interior Alasdair Dunlevy had gone into politics. And, on the whole, having a politician for a husband was better than having an explorer who would be forever away exploring and who might simply disappear altogether and never be heard of again.

Or so Eleanor had told herself.

‘Such a relief the rain has finally ceased,’ she remarked, placing a napkin over her lap.

‘Indeed.’