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‘You can hardly speak of getting old yet in that sense.’

‘You are always old when you are past your work,’ he said.

She did not intend to enter upon personal expostulations or encouragements, yet since, as Norah’s uncle and as country neighbour, Captain Ingpen could not remain a stranger, she was willing to listen to whatever confidences he might feel impelled to impart. And indeed after a moment he went on:

‘The only reason I am here is because it is near London and the India Office, and I have some writing to occupy me. One of those atrocious books that one spends the evening of one’s days perpetrating and that no one ever reads—except a few jealous contemporaries. Maps and statistics, you know, and photographs of oneself standing among one’s native friends. Norah being here was something of a reason too; her mother is the only one of my relatives I could ever endure; I can’t be near her as she lives in Shropshire and is married to a poisonous parson; but Norah is a good girl and would see after one if one were ill.’

‘How do you like your house?’ asked Monica. He was making no definite appeal for sympathy