“—and I had considered,” she was saying, “taking myself off to Greengages for a fortnight. It does quite buck me up, that place.”

“Yes: why don’t you?”

“I think I’d like to just be here, though, while Mr. Gardener gets the place into shape.”

“One calls him ‘Mr. Gardener,’ then?”

“Verity, he is very superior. Anyway, I hate those old snobby distinctions. You don’t evidently.”

“I’ll call him the Duke of Plaza-Toro if he’ll get rid of my weeds.”

“I really must go,” Sybil suddenly decided as if Verity had been preventing her from doing so. “I can’t make up my mind about Greengages.”

Greengages was an astronomically expensive establishment: a hotel with a resident doctor and a sort of valetudinarian sideline where weight was reduced by the exaction of a deadly diet while appetites were stimulated by compulsory walks over a rather dreary countryside. If Sybil decided to go there, Verity would be expected to drive through twenty miles of dense traffic to take a luncheon of inflationary soup and a concoction of liver and tomatoes garnished with mushrooms to which she was uproariously allergic.

She had no sooner hung up her receiver than the telephone rang again.

“Damn,” said Verity, who hankered after her cold duck and salad and the telly.

A vibrant male voice asked if she were herself and on learning that she was, said it was Nikolas Markos speaking.

“Is this a bad time to ring you up?” Mr. Markos asked. “Are you telly-watching or thinking about your dinner, for instance?”

“Not quite yet.”

“But almost, I suspect. I’ll be quick. Would you like to dine here next Wednesday? I’ve been trying to get you all day. Say you will, like a kind creature. Will you?”

He spoke as if they were old friends and Verity, accustomed to this sort of approach in the theatre, responded.