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to Gretna only her father had the coach stopped at Turnham Green.’
    ‘But there’s something not quite right, you say?’
    ‘I wouldn’t go so far as that. But I tell you what it is, Raff’ – here Mr Happerton flung his arm conspiratorially around his friend’s shoulder once more. ‘There are times when I can’t get to the bottom of her. You can come upon her sometimes and think that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But there’s a look on her face now and again that reminds me of – who was that queen who rode in the chariot with the knives sticking out?’
    ‘Boudicea?’ Captain Raff wondered.
    ‘That’s the one. Now I like a woman to be imperious, no one better. The world’s full of simpering chits. But I draw the line at a girl who looks as if she’s about to ask me to go and see if the carriage is back from the stables.’
    ‘That would change, I should think,’ said Captain Raff, who was a bachelor, ‘when you were married.’
    ‘Perhaps it would.’
    ‘And you’ll need more than a pair of Davenant’s bills at three and four if you’re going to bring it off. You’ll have to decide, you know. Famous frontal development’s all very well, but what if she turns out to be a shrew?’
    ‘See here, Raff. I have asked this young lady to marry me. Do you think I want her spoken of in terms such as that?’
    ‘Upon my word, I didn’t mean to give offence,’ said Captain Raff, quite alarmed now. ‘It’s just that I never like to see a man throw himself away, you know.’
    A gleam of light from the fire shone off Mr Happerton’s top-boot. Captain Raff’s wretched highlows were gathered up in shadow. Mr Happerton thought that he was very tired of Captain Raff.
    ‘Never mind Miss Gresham for a moment,’ he said. ‘What about that fellow we are to send to Boulogne?’
    There was no one but the two of them in the room, but even so Captain Raff was careful to lower his voice while telling him about the man who was to be sent to Boulogne and what he might find there, while the fire burned low and the rain fell over the darkening streets beyond the window. In Thavies Inn the trees dripped miserably onto the gravel thoroughfares, and little melancholy whispers of wind ran in and out of the doorways and through the ancient wainscoting, and Mr Happerton, looking down on it from his eyrie in the Blue Riband Club, grew a little frightened, thought of all the demons that this visit to Boulogne might release from their box, and determined that, whatever he might do, and whoever he might marry, and whichever horse might bear his name at the Derby, he would, above all things, keep his head.
     
    *
     
    Mr Gresham’s chambers were at the top of an immense echoing staircase in Stone Buildings and presided over by an old clerk in an ante-room whose especial task it was to repel unwanted visitors. He had very nearly repelled Mr Happerton, but the ornament of the Blue Riband Club had a way of dealing with underlings and doorkeepers. Whether it was that he excelled in deferential small-talk or merely hinted at sovereigns no one quite knew, but there he was, rather to Mr Gresham’s horror, advancing over his carpet and holding out his hand to be shaken. The old lawyer took the hand, but the expression on his face showed what he thought of the man who offered it.
    ‘Tremendous lot of stairs to climb up you have here,’ Mr Happerton said. He had a way of casting his eye round a room, inspecting the shine of its curtains and the lustre of the invitation cards on its mantelpiece, that infuriated Mr Gresham. ‘But here I am again.’
    ‘Indeed, although I don’t recall inviting you, Mr Happerton.’
    ‘Well – perhaps not.’ As he looked round the chamber, with its cases full of dull, legal books, the back-numbers of the Law Gazette piled neatly on a damask-covered chair and the old lawyer’s stuff gown hanging from a hook by the door, Mr Happerton thought that he was not in the least frightened of Mr