‘You are getting off the point, my dear sir,’ said Moreland. ‘We are discussing marriage, not racing. Matrimony is the point at issue.’

Stringham made a gesture to silence him. I had never before seen Moreland conversationally so completely mastered. It was hard to imagine what the two of them would have made of each other in more sober circumstances. They were very different. Stringham had none of Moreland’s passionate self-identification with the arts; Moreland was without Stringham’s bitter grasp of social circumstance. At the same time they had something in common. There was also much potential antipathy. Each would probably have found the other unsympathetic over a long period.

‘And then,’ said Stringham, lowering his voice and raising his eyebrows slightly, ‘one wonders about making love… counts up on one’s fingers… No… It can’t be that…’

Mrs Maclintick gave a raucous laugh.

‘I know!’ Stringham now almost shouted, as if in sudden enlightenment. ‘I’ve got it. It was going on about what a charming girl Rosie Manasch is. That was a bloody silly thing to do, when I know Peggy hates Rosie like poison. But I’m wandering… talking of years ago… of the days before Rosie married Jock Udall…’

‘Heavens,’ said Moreland. ‘Do you know the Manasches? I once conducted at a charity concert in their house.’

Stringham ignored him.

‘But then, on the other hand,’ he went on, in a slower, much quieter voice, ‘Rosie may have nothing whatever to do with it. One’s wife may be ill. Sickening for some terrible disease. Something to which one has never given a thought. She is sinking. Wasting away under one’s eyes. It is just one’s own callousness about her state. That is all that’s wrong. You begin to get really worried. Should you get up and summon a doctor right away?’

‘The doctor always tells Maclintick to drink less,’ said Mrs Maclintick. ‘Always the same story. “Put a drop more water in it,” he says, “then you will feel better.” You might just as well talk to a brick wall. Maclintick is not going to drink less because a doctor tells him to. If he won’t stop after what I’ve said to him, is it likely he will knock off for a doctor? Why should he?’

‘Why, indeed, you little rogue?’ said Stringham, tapping Mrs Maclintick’s knee with a folded copy of the concert programme, which had somehow found its way into his hand. ‘Well, of course, in the end you discover that all this ill humour is nothing to do with yourself at all. In fact your wife is hardly aware that she is living in the same house with you. It was something that somebody said about her to someone who gossiped to somebody she knew when that somebody was having her hair done. Neither less nor more than that. All the same, it is you, her husband, who has to bear the brunt of those ill-chosen remarks by somebody about something. I’ve talked it all over with Ted Jeavons and he quite agrees.’

‘I adore Uncle Ted,’ said Priscilla, anxious to show that she herself had perfectly followed this dissertation.

‘And you, Black-eyed Susan,’ said Stringham, turning again in the direction of Mrs Maclintick, at the same time raising the programme interrogatively, ‘do you too suffer in your domestic life – of which you speak with such a wealth of disillusionment – from the particular malaise I describe: the judgment of terrible silences?’

That was a subject upon which Mrs Maclintick felt herself in a position to speak authoritatively; the discussion, if uninterrupted, might have proceeded for a long time. Moreland was showing some signs of restlessness, although he and the others sitting there seemed to be finding some release from themselves, and their individual lives, in what was being said. The remainder of Mrs Foxe’s guests, although in fact just round the corner, appeared for some reason infinitely far away. Then, all at once, I became aware that a new personality, an additional force, had been added to our group. This was a woman. She was standing beside me. How long she had been there, where she came from, I did not know.

It was Miss Weedon. She had probably avoided having herself announced in order to make quietly for the place where Stringham was to be found. In any case, her long association with the house as one of its inmates made such a formality almost inappropriate. As usual, she managed to look both businesslike and rather elegant, her large sharp nose and severe expression adding to her air of efficiency, suggesting on the whole a successful, fairly chic career woman. Enclosed in black, her dress committed her neither to night nor day; suitable for Mrs Foxe’s party, it would have done equally well for some lesser occasion. She did not look at all like the former governess of Stringham’s sister, Flavia, although there remained something dominating and controlling about Miss Weedon, hinting that she was used to exercising some form of professional authority. Undoubtedly her intention was to take Stringham home. No other objective could have brought her out at this hour of the night. Priscilla, who had probably met Miss Weedon more than once at the Jeavonses’ – where Miss Weedon was a frequent guest before moving in as an occupant of the house itself – was the first to notice her.

‘Hullo, Miss Weedon,’ she said blushing.

Priscilla moved, probably involuntarily, further from Moreland, who was sitting rather close to her on the sofa. Miss Weedon smiled coldly. She advanced a little deeper into the room, her mysterious, equivocal presence casting a long, dark shadow over the scene.

‘Why, hullo, Tuffy,’ said Stringham, suddenly seeing Miss Weedon too. ‘I am so glad you have turned up. I wondered if I should see you. I just dropped in to say good evening to Mamma, whom I hadn’t set eyes on for ages, only to find the gayest of gay parties in progress. Let me introduce everyone. Lady Priscilla Tolland – you know Tuffy, of course. How silly of me. Now this is Mrs Maclintick, who has been telling me some really hair-raising stories about musical people. I shall never listen to an orchestra again without the most painful speculations about the home life of the players. Nick, of course, you’ve often met. I’m afraid I don’t know your name, Mr-?’

‘Moreland,’ said Moreland, absolutely enchanted by Stringham’s complete ignorance of his identity.

‘Moreland!’ said Stringham. ‘This is Mr Moreland, Tuffy. Mr Moreland for whom the whole party is being given. What a superb faux pas on my part. A really exquisite blunder. How right it is that I should emerge but rarely. Well, there we are – and this, I nearly forgot to add, Mr Moreland, is Miss Weedon.’

He was still perfectly at ease. There was not the smallest sign to inform a casual observer that Stringham was now looked upon by his own family, by most of his friends, as a person scarcely responsible for his own actions; that he was about to be removed from his mother’s house by a former secretary who had taken upon herself to look after him, because – I suppose – she loved him. All the same, although nothing outward indicated that something dramatic was taking place, Stringham himself, after he had performed these introductions, had risen from his chair with one of his random, easy movements, so that to me it was clear he knew the game was up. He knew that he must be borne away by Miss Weedon within the next few minutes to whatever prison-house now enclosed him. Moreland and Priscilla glanced at each other, recognising a break in the rhythm of the party, probably wanting to make a move themselves, but unaware quite what was happening. Mrs Maclintick, on the other hand, showed herself not at all willing to have the group disposed of in so arbitrary a manner. She turned a most unfriendly stare on Miss Weedon, which seemed by its contemptuous expression to recognise in her, by some unaccountable feminine intuition, a figure formerly subordinate in Mrs Foxe’s household.