“The boy from the Angel has brought a note, sir,” said the landlady, when Hornblower called her in in reply to her knock at the sitting-room door. “He waits an answer.”

Hornblower felt a shock as he read the address—the clear feminine handwriting which he recognised although it was months since he saw it last meant so much to him. He tried to disguise his feelings as he spoke to his wife.

“It is addressed to both of us, my dear,” he said. “Shall I open it?”

“As you please,” said Maria.

Hornblower broke the wafer and unfolded the note.

The Angel Inn, Plymouth.

Fourth May, 1810.

Rear Admiral Sir Percy and Lady Barbara Leighton would esteem it an Honour if Captain and Mrs Horatio Hornblower would dine with them at this address Tomorrow, the Fifth, at four o’clock.

“The Admiral is at the Angel. He wants us to dine with him tomorrow,” said Hornblower, as casually as his beating heart would allow. “Lady Barbara is with him. I think we must accept, my dear.”

He passed the note over to his wife.

“I have only my blue sack gown,” said Maria, looking up from reading it.

The first thing a woman ever thought about on receiving an invitation was what she should wear. Hornblower tried to bend his mind to the consideration of the blue sack gown, when all the time his heart was singing songs at the knowledge that Lady Barbara was only two hundred yards away.

“It looks perfect on you, my dear,” he said. “You know how much I have always liked it.”

It would call for a far better gown to look well on Maria’s dumpy figure. But Hornblower knew that they must—they must–accept the invitation, and it would be a kindness to reassure Maria. It did not matter what clothes Maria wore as long as she thought she looked well in them. Maria smiled happily at the compliment, giving Hornblower a prick of conscience. He felt like Judas. Maria would look coarse and badly dressed and stupid beside Lady Barbara, and yet he knew that as long as he pretended to be in love with her she would be happy and unconscious.