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girl being raped–’
    â€˜Cyprian, dear,’ Lady Mullion said.
    â€˜Well, anything of that sort. And half a dozen people look on and do nothing about it, because some completely inhibitory mechanism takes charge. And that’s what happened here.’
    â€˜But not for long, as you perfectly well know,’ Boosie said. ‘For Miss Kinder-Scout had seen you after all, and she’d had enough. So she called out in that rather loud voice she has: “Lord Wyndowe, I am glad to see you have found the cigarette case you mislaid.” And I suppose the party took you for a harmless family lunatic.’
    â€˜We’re pretty well furnished in that line already, aren’t we?’ Cyprian asked. Then he turned to his father. ‘By the way, sir, what are we going to do about providing Mr Honeybath with a studio?’
    â€˜Excellent question.’ Lord Mullion was plainly relieved that the late slightly unbecoming exchanges were over. ‘Only we mustn’t hurry Honeybath into a decision about anything of that kind. Charles, I’m sure you’ll want to get to know the place a bit for a start?’
    â€˜Decidedly, Henry. And, Lady Mullion, you–’
    â€˜Mary – please.’
    â€˜And you, Mary, may have your own orders to give. I seem to remember Henry speaking of your portrait as being required for hanging on the other side of the fireplace from his. But I suspect he was being funny.’
    â€˜Oh, definitely,’ Lord Mullion said. ‘Or call it une façon de parler , Charles. I just felt we ought both to be done, you know.’
    â€˜Quite so. And if the one portrait needn’t control the other, then Mary can choose between various possibilities. A neutral background, for example, or a formal and traditional one–’
    â€˜Marble pillars,’ Boosie said. ‘improbably draped with velvet curtains and gold tassels? She won’t want that.’
    â€˜Or a favourite corner of a room, or the open air,’ Honeybath concluded.
    â€˜Under the castle chestnut tree the castle beauty stands,’ Patty said. ‘I vote for that. Or I would if we had a chestnut tree – which I don’t think we do. But what about a dress, Mr Honeybath? May my mother choose that?’
    â€˜Ah, there we come on delicate ground.’ Honeybath was well-acquainted with this sort of chatter, and believed himself to have a modest skill in treating it lightly. ‘But one can come to an accommodation with women in a way one often can’t with men. Men have all those absurd and inflexible fancy-dresses that Virginia Woolf made fun of. Uniforms and mayoral gowns and doctoral robes. It would be all right if they didn’t have complexions – often confoundedly pronounced complexions – as well. Monkey with the hue of the uniform and they treat you as if you were a fraudulent military tailor. Tackle the problem through the complexion and they accuse you of representing them either as dipsomaniac or at death’s door. Be compliant and the critics laugh at you – and fairly enough. Painters are like policemen. Their lot is not a happy one.’
    This little routine on the mysteries of art was well received, and stimulated the younger Wyndowes to various jocose suggestions. Cyprian expressed the hope that Honeybath wouldn’t insist on his mother being paraded in all the Mullion diamonds, since this would result in the embarrassing disclosure that his father had been constrained to put them quietly up the spout. Boosie, who didn’t approve of this flight of fancy, advanced one of her own – to the effect that her mother might be represented signing a cheque to pay off her brother’s embarrassments of a different character at Cambridge and elsewhere. Lady Mullion, seeing the conversation thus veer again towards family pleasantry of an undesirable sort, rose and said firmly that they would take coffee on the