“Of course not! How should you, when you can’t tell us apart?” said Mr Fancot, prudently removing the candlestick from her grasp.

“I can tell you apart!” she declared. “If I had expected to see you I should have recognized you instantly! The thing was, I thought you were in Vienna.”

“No, I’m here,” said Mr Fancot, smiling lovingly down at her. “Stewart gave me leave of absence: are you pleased?”

“Oh, no, not a bit!” she said, tucking her hand in his arm, and drawing him into her bedchamber. “Let me look at you, wicked one! Oh, I can’t see you properly! Light all the candles, dearest, and then we may be comfortable. The money that is spent on candles in this house! I shouldn’t have thought it possible if Dinting hadn’t shown me the chandler’s bill, which, I must say, I wish she had not, for what, I ask you, Kit, is the use of knowing the cost of candles? One must have them, after all, and even your father never desired me to purchase tallow ones.”

“I suppose one might burn fewer,” remarked Kit, applying a taper to some half-dozen which stood in two chandeliers on the dressing-table.

“No, no, nothing is more dismal than an ill-lit room! Light the ones on the mantelpiece, dearest! Yes, that is much better! Now come and tell me all about yourself!”

She had drifted over to an elegant day-bed, and patted it invitingly, but Kit did not immediately obey the summons. He stood looking about him at the scene he had illumined, exclaiming: “Why, how is this, Mama? You were used to live in a rose-garden, and now one would think oneself at the bottom of the sea!”

As this was the impression she had hoped to create when, at stupendous cost, she had had the room redecorated in varying shades of green, she was pleased, and said approvingly: “Exactly so! I can’t think how I endured those commonplace roses for so long—particularly when poor Mr Brummell told me years ago that I was one of the few females whom green becomes better than any other colour.”