It was after one of his Adrian evenings that Lucas met his aunt, Mrs. Mebberley, at a fashionable tea shop, where the lamp of family life is still kept burning and you meet relatives who might otherwise have slipped your memory.

“Who was that good-looking boy who was dining with you last night?” she asked. “He looked much too nice to be thrown away upon you.”

Susan Mebberley was a charming woman, but she was also an aunt.

“Who are his people?” she continued, when the protégé’s name (revised version) had been given her.

“His mother lives at Beth⁠—”

Lucas checked himself on the threshold of what was perhaps a social indiscretion.

“Beth? Where is it? It sounds like Asia Minor. Is she mixed up with Consular people?”