Jeanie was a very young girl, fat and pasty, with flaxen 165hair and white eyelashes. Her expression was hallucinated, and her hand was cold as ice, but so, Aubrey thought, would any expression be, and any hand, that has just been driven down from London by Dulcibella Tregurtha.

‘Has Leo arrived?’

‘Not that I know of,’ he said, not choosing to admit that he had no notion who Leo might be.

‘Old turncoat! Never mind, we can do without him, and after all he’s not really interested in anything outside Byzantium. I wouldn’t have bothered with him if it weren’t that he can do anything he pleases with The Times. Anyhow, this business about architecture can wait. The more I think of it, the more clearly I see that the first essential is to establish the truth, and that the least we can do for these innocent, good-hearted burgesses of yours is to open their eyes to that woman’s shameless boots. They have been hoodwinked long enough. Let them have the truth, I say, and then they can decide for themselves whether or no they will perpetuate her loathsome hoard of fetishes. Burn the lot, I say! But they must decide for themselves. This is a free country. All I can do is to open their eyes. Jeanie agrees—don’t you, darling?’

‘Yeth.’

Miss Tregurtha’s copy of Psychopathia Sexualis bristled with paper markers. It was plain that she proposed to give readings—whether public or private Aubrey would know all too soon—from the section of that captivating work devoted to foot fetishists.

Jeanie, on the other hand, struck Aubrey as being shy. Overcoming a physical distaste, he set himself to be 166hospitable to the poor little guinea-pig. ‘Have you had it long, your Evil Eye?’

‘Yeth.’

‘Indeed. That must be very—’

‘It’th in the family. My Uncle Blair had it latht.’

Quelling an impulse to ask—for the lisp was compellingly catching—whether it had been bequeathed ath a legathy, Aubrey inquired what her Uncle Blair had done with it.

‘Lotth of thingth. Onthe, he blathted a window. It wath a thtained-glath window in a church, and he wath there to dedicate it—he wath a dean. It wath a very ugly window, and he gave it one glanthe of horror, and it cracked from top to bottom and fell to pietheth during the theremony—like minthemeat.’

The purpose of Jeanie’s visit was now clear, and lunch, Hopkins said, was served. Dulcibella remarked that they should not think of waiting for Leo. While Aubrey was hearing about Uncle Blair, she had been turning over his proofs, and now had some revisions and improvements to suggest. She suggested with energy, Aubrey stood up for his own, and fifteen minutes later Hopkins repeated that lunch was served. The meal was plentiful, succulent and totally unforeseen. Aubrey realized that it was the servants’ lunch, nobly contributed to keep up the credit of his establishment. As he ate it, he reflected that though Mrs Trumper cooked very well for him, she cooked even better for her peers. Jeanie ate with a good Scots appetite. Dulcibella supported herself on pickled walnuts and cigarettes—as he had expected. It was a shocking reflection 167that already he knew her well enough to know what she would eat.