“Girls are so foolish, Mr. Gillingham,” she was saying. “It is fortunate that they have mothers to guide them. It was so obvious to me from the beginning that dear Mr. Ablett was just the husband for my little girl. You never knew him?”

Antony said again that he had not seen Mr. Ablett.

“Such a gentleman. So nice-looking, in his artistic way. A regular Velasquez⁠—I should say Van Dyck. Angela would have it that she could never marry a man with a beard. As if that mattered, when⁠—” She broke off, and Antony finished her sentence for her.

“The Red House is certainly charming,” he said.