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Auntie Patsy. We did a heavenly, heavenly trip. I must tell you about it, but not now.”
    “But would your mother like you to marry a Frenchman?” I said. At this time love and marriage were inextricably knotted in my mind.
    “Oh, not marry, good gracious, no. She’d just like me to have a little weakness for him, to show that I’m capable of it. She wants to see if I’m like other women. Well, she’ll see. There’s the dressing bell—I’ll call for you when I’m ready. I don’t live up here any more, I’ve got a new room over the porch. Heaps of time, Fanny, quite an hour.”

Chapter 4

    M Y BEDROOM WAS in the tower, where Polly’s nurseries had been when she was small. Whereas all the other rooms at Hampton were classical in feeling, the tower rooms were exaggeratedly Gothic, the Gothic of fairy-story illustrations. In this one the bed, the cupboards and the fireplace had pinnacles; the wallpaper was a design of scrolls and the windows were casements. An extensive work of modernisation had taken place all over the house while the family was in India, and looking round I saw that in one of the cupboards there was now a tiled bathroom.
    In the old days I used to sally forth, sponge in hand, to the nursery bathroom which was down a terrifying, twisting staircase, and I could still remember how cold it used to be outside, in the passages, though there was always a blazing fire in my room. But now the central heating had been brought up to date and the temperature everywhere was that of a hot-house. The fire which flickered away beneath the spires and towers of the chimney-piece was merely there for show, and no longer to be lighted at 7 A.M., before one was awake, by a little maid scuffling about like a mouse. The age of luxury was ended and that of comfort had begun. Being conservative by nature, I was glad to see that the decoration of the roomhad not been changed at all, though the lighting was very much improved. There was a new quilt on the bed, the mahogany dressing table had acquired a muslin petticoat and a triple looking-glass, and the whole room and bathroom were close carpeted. Otherwise everything was exactly as I remembered it, including two large yellow pictures which could be seen from the bed, Caravaggio’s “The Gamesters” and “A Courtesan” by Raphael.
    I dressed for dinner, passionately wishing that Polly and I could have spent the evening together upstairs, supping off a tray, as we used to do, in the schoolroom. I was dreading this grown-up dinner ahead of me because I knew that once I found myself in the dining room, seated between two of the old gentlemen downstairs, it would no longer be possible to remain a silent spectator. I should be obliged to try and think of things to say. It had been drummed into me all my life, especially by Davey, that silence at meal times is antisocial.
    “So long as you chatter, Fanny, it’s of no consequence what you say. Better recite out of the A.B.C. than sit like a deaf mute. Think of your poor hostess—it simply isn’t fair on her.”
    In the dining room, between the man called Rory and the man called Roly, I found things even worse than I had expected. The protective colouring, which had worked so well in the drawing room, was now going on and off like a deficient electric light. I was visible, one of my neighbours would begin a conversation with me and seem quite interested in what I was telling him when, without any warning at all, I would become invisible and Rory and Roly were both shouting across the table at the lady called Veronica, while I was left in mid-air with some sad little remark. It then became too obvious that they had not heard a single word I had been saying but had all along been entranced by the infinitely more fascinating conversation of this Veronica lady. All right then, invisible, which really I much preferred, able to eat happily away in silence. But no, not at all, unaccountably visible again.
    “Is Lord Alconleigh