So Mrs Belper had talked to them — not to eighty-seven-year-old Mrs Transom, the widow of the Emeritus Professor of Architecture, a ‘girl’ of whom little could be expected, but to Millicent Braithwaite, who single-handed had pulled three drunken undergraduates from a high spiked wall as they tried to climb into Trinity, and to Eugenia Crowley, who was amazingly fleet-footed from cross-country running with her pack of Guides — and they had promised that the young couple would never be out of sight.

Edward accordingly had been invited and now, sensibly deciding to mix business with pleasure, he stood beside Harriet, dressed for the country and holding his butterfly-net, a strong canvas sweep-net for those insects which preferred to hop or crawl along the ground, and a khaki haversack containing his pooter, his killing bottle and his tins.

The omnibus arrived; rugs, parasols and hampers of food were loaded on. Miss Transom climbed aboard and began to heave her aged, cantankerous mother on to the step. Eugenia Crowley, twitching with responsibility, and Millicent Braithwaite — a deeply muscular figure in a magenta two-piece and kid boots — performed a neat pincer movement, placing themselves one in front of and one behind the seat which contained Edward and Harriet — and the bus set off.

Harriet had not wanted to come; she could imagine nothing less enjoyable than trailing round a great house in the company of the Tea Circle ladies, and Edward’s presence was an added burden for present always in her mind was the dread that one day she would be driven to yield — to accept, if it came, his offer of marriage. If she married Edward, she could have a garden in which flowers actually grew; a dog; a pond with goldfish. She could sit in the sun and read and have her friends. But at this point always she stopped her thoughts, for somewhere in this imagined garden there was a pram with a gurgling baby: her baby, soft and warm.

But not only hers. And as so often before Harriet gave thanks for Maisie, the melancholy and eccentric housemaid who had given her, when she was six years old, such a comprehensive and unadorned account of what people did to bring babies into the world. Harriet had lain awake in her attic for many nights trying to comprehend the complicated unpleasantness of what she had heard, but now she was glad of Maisie’s detailed crudity. Too easy otherwise, when she read of Dante’s sublime passion for his Beatrice or (in melting and mellifluous Greek) of the innocent Daphnis’s pursuit of Chloe, to imagine love as some glorious upsurge of the human spirit. It was of course, but not only, and now as she gently drew away her arm from Edward’s — which was growing warm in the crowded bus — she knew that that way out was barred.

But what way was open? Her father, the night after the dinner-party, had himself gone to Madame Lavarre and stopped her dancing lessons once and for all. There was nothing left now: nothing.

Only I must not despair, thought Harriet. Despair was a sin, she knew that: turning one’s face away from the created world. And resolutely she forced herself not just to look at, but really to see the greening hedges, the glistening buttercups, the absurd new lambs — setting herself, as unhappy people do, a kind of pastoral litany.

And presently she succeeded, for the gentle peaceful countryside under the light wide sky was truly lovely and it was spring and there had to be a future somewhere, even for her. So that when Edward said, ‘This is very pleasant, Harriet, is it not?’ she was able to turn to him, pushing back her loose hair behind her ears, and smile and agree.

But when at last the bus turned in between the stone lions on the gate-posts and they drove down Stavely’s famous double avenue of beeches towards the house, Harriet’s soft ‘Oh!’ of pleasure owed nothing to the deliberate exercise of will. She had expected grandeur, ostentation, pomp… and found instead an unequivocal and awe-inspiring beauty.

Stavely was long and low, built of a warm and rosy brick: a house which had no truck with fortifications and moats and battlements, but proclaimed itself joyously as a place for living in — for music and banquets and the raising of fine children. Sheltered by a low wooded hill, the Hall faced serenely south into the sun and with its stone quoins, mullioned windows and graceful chimneys most gloriously avowed the principles of the Tudor Renaissance; ‘Commoditie, Fitnesse and Delight’.

‘Out we get, girls!’ cried Mrs Belper. ‘We have just ten minutes to stretch our legs and then we meet at the front door at twelve o’clock sharp for a tour of the house.’

The ‘girls’ got out. Mrs Transom was lowered down and tottered away on the arm of her daughter, while — followed at a discreet distance by their conscientious chaperones — Edward and Harriet made their way through the gatehouse arch towards the formal gardens.

If Harriet’s first impression of Stavely had been of overwhelming beauty, her second was of neglect. The fine trees of the beech avenue were indestructible, as was the parkland where clumps of cattle moved slowly over a sea of grass. But here, close to the house, where everything depended on a careful husbandry, it was clear that something was wrong. Weeds straggled over the gravel paths; the yews in the topiary, the formal lines of the knot-garden were blurred for want of trimming. This was a sleeping house, its decline masked by the tenderness of the green creeper hiding a garden door, by the young leaves of an unpruned rose laying its tendrils across a window. A house awaiting the kiss of a prince — a rich prince, Harriet corrected herself, guessing at the multitude of gardeners and groundsmen that would be needed to succour Stavely’s loveliness.

‘Was it like this when you used to come here, Edward?’ asked Harriet. ‘So overgrown and neglected?’

‘No, I don’t think so. But remember I was very small and after Colonel Brandon died we never came again. His son — the present owner — was not at all friendly to Mama.’

By the main door where all the ladies were now assembled, a disappointment awaited them. Although Aunt Louisa, who acted as the Circle’s secretary, had specifically mentioned Edward Finch-Dutton’s presence in the party in her confirmatory letter, there was no sign of Mrs Brandon. Instead a gloomy, ancient and cadaverous-looking individual with a bald and liver-spotted pate introduced himself as Mr Grunthorpe, the family butler, and leading them into a huge, panelled room he immediately began his patter.

‘The room we now find ourselves in is known as the Great Hall. You will please observe the outstanding examples of Elizabethan plasterwork and panelling. Above the archway we see a carving of the twelve apostles…’

‘Very fine,’ said Mrs Belper.

‘Note also the chimney-piece surmounted by the Brandon arms impaling those of Henrietta Verney, who was united to the family by marriage in the year 1633,’ droned the patently uninterested Mr Grunthorpe.

Harriet noted them… but noted too the dust that lay on the backs of the carved chairs, noted the dull streakiness of the long refectory table… the cold creeping through the room as though it was years since a fire had burned in that splendid grate.

They moved on down a corridor and into the Drawing-Room — a delightful room filled with Hepplewhite furniture — but here too was the same neglect. One yellow damask curtain was half-drawn across the window as though the effort of pulling it back had been too much for some indifferent housemaid. The fender was unpolished, the crystal chandelier lacklustre and dull.

In the Dining-Room, with its walls of dark Cordoba leather, there was an unfortunate diversion.

‘I want to go to the lavatory,’ announced the ancient Mrs Transom in a surprisingly loud, firm voice.

‘No, you don’t, Mother,’ hissed her daughter. ‘Not now, you don’t — you’ve been.’

‘What do you mean, no, I don’t?’ said the old woman angrily. ‘I may be old, I may be useless, I may be someone whom everyone would like to see dead and laid out on a slab, but I still know when I want to go to the lavatory and I want to go to the lavatory now.’

A hurried consultation followed. The butler, more bored than pained, issued instructions, holding out his mottled hand in case the information rendered might produce a tip. Mrs Transom was led away on the arm of her unfortunate daughter — and the party trooped into the Library.

Oh, the poor books, thought Harriet, running her handkerchief surreptitiously along the dusty, calf-bound volumes on an open shelf. Here was Horace who had so loved the foolish Lesbia and Sappho who had turned loneliness into the most moving verses of the ancient world — and here Harriet’s own special friend, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius whose Meditations she now pulled out and opened at random, to read:

Live not as though a thousand years are ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours.

Only, what is good? wondered Harriet. She had thought of it as submission, virtue, not setting up her will against others. But might it mean something else? Might it mean making yourself strong and creative? Might it mean following your star?

The butler glared at her and she replaced the book. However poor I was, reflected Harriet, I would always dust the books. And I would always find flowers, she thought, remembering the drifts of wild narcissi she had seen as they came up the drive. And once again she wondered what ailed this marvellous house.

They trooped up the grand staircase, admiring the carved newel posts, while from below came the anguished baying of Mrs Transom’s daughter, who had taken a wrong turning and lay becalmed in a distant hallway. Here were the private apartments of the family — the upper Drawing-Room, the bedrooms — past which the cadaverous Mr Grunthorpe, enjoining silence, now led them bound for the Long Gallery on the top floor.