“So he did,” agreed Verity pacifically.

“I’ve got news for you.”

“Have you?”

“You’ll never guess. An invitation. From Mardling Manor, no less;” said Sybil in a put-on drawing-room-comedy voice.

“Really?”

“For dinner. Next Wednesday. He rang up this morning. Rather unconventional if one’s to stickle, I suppose, but that sort of tommy-rot’s as dead as the dodo in my book. And we have met. When he lent Mardling for that hospital fund-raising garden-party. Nobody went inside, of course. I’m told lashings of lolly have been poured out — redecorated, darling, from attic to cellar. You were there, weren’t you? At the garden-party?”

“Yes.”

“Yes. I was sure you were. Rather intriguing, I thought, didn’t you?”

“I hardly spoke to him,” said Verity inaccurately.

“I hoped you’d been asked,” said Sybil much more inaccurately.

“Not I. I expect you’ll have gorgeous grub.”

“I don’t know that it’s a party.”

“Just you?”

“My dear. Surely not! But no. Prue’s come home. She’s met the son somewhere and so she’s been asked: to balance him, I suppose. Well,” said Sybil on a dashing note, “we shall see what we shall see.”

“Have a lovely time. How’s the arthritis?”

“Oh, you know. Pretty ghastly, but I’m learning to live with it. Nothing else to be done, is there? If it’s not that it’s my migraine.”

“I thought Dr. Field-Innis had given you something for the migraine.”

“Hopeless, my dear. If you ask me Field-Innis is getting beyond it. And he’s become very off-hand, I don’t mind telling you.”

Verity half-listened to the so-familiar plaints. Over the years Sybil had consulted a procession of general practitioners and in each instance enthusiasm had dwindled into discontent. It was only because there were none handy, Verity sometimes thought, that Syb had escaped falling into the hands of some plausible quack.