“Is it an Uccello?” she asked, turning back to the picture.

“I like to think so, but it’s a borderline case. ‘School of’ is all the pundits will allow me.”

“It’s extraordinarily exciting.”

“Isn’t it, just? I’m glad you like it. And delighted, by the way, that you’ve come.”

Verity was overtaken by one of her moments of middle-aged shyness. “Oh. Good,” she mumbled.

“We’re nine for dinner: my son, Gideon, a Dr. Basil Schramm who’s yet to arrive, and you know all the rest: Mrs. Foster and her daughter, the Vicar (she’s indisposed) and Dr. and Mrs. Field-Innis. Come and join them.”

Verity’s recollection of the drawing-room at Mardling was of a great ungainly apartment, over-furnished and nearly always chilly. She found herself in a bird’s-egg blue and white room, sparkling with firelight and a welcoming elegance.

There, expansively on a sofa, was Sybil at her most feminine, and that was saying a great deal. Hair, face, pampered little hands, jewels, dress and, if you got close enough, scent — they all came together like the ingredients of some exotic pudding. She fluttered a minute handkerchief at Verity and pulled an arch grimace.

“This is Gideon,” said Mr. Markos.

He was even darker than his father and startlingly handsome. “My dear, an Adonis,” Sybil was to say of him and later was to add that there was “something” wrong and that she was never deceived, she sensed it at once, let Verity mark her words. When asked to explain herself she said it didn’t matter but she always knew. Verity thought that she knew, too. Sybil was hell-bent on her daughter Prunella encouraging the advances of a hereditary peer with the unlikely name of Swingletree and took an instant dislike to any attractive young man who hove into view.