Then he served in Egypt and got a D.S.O., and soon after the Armistice he went to France and Germany for languages, because he was entering the Diplomatic Service and the usual thing is to get attached for a few years to one of the embassies or legations. He’s only twenty-five.”

“Sounds like a future in front of him.”

“That—er—is what I have hoped. We’ve always got on excellently together—good friends, I mean, as well as father and son. When I arrived in Vienna recently the first thing he did was to take me off to some restaurant where we could talk—because I hadn’t seen him for six months, and that’s a long time for family gossip to accumulate.” Winslow began to smile again. “I thought from the outset he didn’t seem exactly himself—he was preoccupied, somehow, in the way he behaved and talked —and later I asked if there’d been any trouble at the Embassy, but he said no, nothing like that. At last I got out of him what HAD caused the change.” The smile became suddenly forced and wan. “Perfectly natural, you may think.”

“Been worrying about conditions in Austria? I understand things are pretty bad, what with the famine and inflation—”

“No—not even all that… He’d fallen in love.”

George chuckled. “Well, sir, that quite often happens to good- looking chaps of twenty-five. The only surprising thing is that it hadn’t happened before.”

“Oh, but it had. That’s one of the—er—complications. He was engaged to a very charming girl, a neighbour of ours in Berkshire, but he said he’d already written to her to break it off—on account of the —er—new attraction.”

“I see.” And at this George frowned slightly. A whiff of truculence was generated in him as, momentarily, he saw in Winslow no longer an unworldly scholar but a hidebound aristocrat conforming to type; for already the probable outlines of the story seemed clear—a father anxious for his son to make a socially correct marriage, the son’s romance with some pretty but penniless Austrian girl… and George, of course, was all on the side of the son and the girl, though he would wait to say so till Winslow had finished. All he commented now was a blunt: “Everyone has a right to change his mind.”

“Of course. It wasn’t my place to interfere—provided the supplanter was all right.”

“Not even if you thought she wasn’t. A chap of twenty-five must choose for himself.”

“Yes, in theory, though when—”

“In theory AND in practice, sir. I don’t say a father can’t give advice in these matters, but that’s about all he CAN give. And if a young fellow makes a mistake, well, it’s his mistake, and he can’t blame anyone else. Haven’t we all made mistakes? And besides, even if she is a foreigner and recently an enemy—”

“Oh, that wouldn’t worry me, and anyhow, she isn’t—she’s English.”

“Then what does worry you?”

“Perhaps I’d better go on with what happened. Jeff naturally described her to me in glowing colours and suggested an early meeting, so we all three dined together the next day, and I must admit my first impression was favourable—at any rate, she struck me as both charming and intelligent…”

George was about to pour his guest another cup of tea, but Winslow made a declining gesture. “Very kind of you, Boswell, but—but I really feel in need of something a little stronger—I wonder—if you —if it isn’t too much trouble—if I could have a whisky and soda?”

At which George could only in his own turn look embarrassed. “To tell you the truth I don’t have such a thing in the house—you see, I’m teetotal. But if you’re not feeling well I could send Annie out for a drop of brandy—”

“Oh, please, no, I’m perfectly well—just tiredness, that’s all. I really shouldn’t have mentioned it. Of no consequence at all, I assure you.” What had really been demonstrated was a social distinction far more revealing than any question of blood or accent—the fact that Winslow, though he drank sparingly, nevertheless belonged to the class for whom whisky is as much a household commonplace as salt or soap; whereas George, though by no means a bigot, had inherited enough of his father’s puritanism to think of liquor in terms of drunkenness and social problems.

After the gulf had been bridged by renewed apologies on both sides, Winslow continued: “To come to the point”—(AT LAST, thought George) —“I told Jeff afterwards that if they’d both made up their minds there was nothing much for me to say. I was just a bit worried, though, because I gathered it had been a very sudden affair, and I didn’t think he could really know enough about her.”

“You mean her family and so on?”

“Partly. You may think me a snob, but I had to ask myself whether, as a diplomat’s wife, she would have the right background.”

“Aye, I suppose that’s what counts.” George’s voice was severe.

“Yes—though not as much as it used to.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I don’t know much about the Diplomatic Service, but I’m all for democracy in these things. And since you have to admit the girl was all right herself—”

“Oh yes, she seemed so. I could imagine her a good hostess, and she certainly had intelligence enough to pull wires.”

“Do diplomats’ wives have to do that?”

“They don’t have to, but it can help. Don’t the wives of your local councillors sometimes do it?”

George grinned. “Not mine, anyhow.