Mrs. Lambert smiled with inner satisfaction. She had already won and no longer needed to compete. The triumph of it was luminous in her eyes. Zillah herself looked serenely happy.

Rathbone felt like part of a group picnicking in the sun, and he was the only one aware of the clouds thickening over the horizon, and growing chill in the air.

Mrs. Ballinger was waiting for a reply.

Rathbone looked at Margaret, and his compassion overcame his sense and he answered with the truth.

"Yes, I am very fond of music, particularly the violin."

Mrs. Ballinger's answer was immediate.

"Then perhaps you would care to visit with us some occasion and hear Margaret play. We are holding a soiree next Thursday."

Margaret bit her lip and the color mounted up her face. She turned away from Rathbone, and he was quite certain she would have looked daggers at her mother had she dared. He wondered how many times before she had endured this scene, or ones like it.

He had walked straight into the trap. He was almost as angry as Margaret at the blatancy of it. And yet neither of them could do anything without making it worse.

Delphine Lambert was watching with an air of gentle amusement, her delicate mouth not quite smiling.

It was Julia Ballinger who broke the minute's silence.

"I daresay Sir Oliver does not have his diary to hand, Mama. I am sure he will send us a card to say whether he is able to accept, if we allow him our address."

Margaret shot her a look of gratitude.

Rathbone smiled. "You are perfectly correct, Miss Julia. I am afraid I am not certain of my engagements a week ahead. My memory is not as exact as I should like, and I should be mortified to find I had offended someone by failing to attend an invitation I had already accepted. Or indeed that a case kept me overlong where I had foreseen it might…"