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The bedroom door opened. 'Oo, Miss,' croaked Mrs. Harradson, balancing backwards and forwards in the gap, as with the limited mobility of a mechanical toy; her frosty crest, the independent strand of hair which tented up over her occiput, rising and falling, giving her a startled expression when it was most erect. So she advanced, only to fall back, and then advanced again once more to be checked and to retreat holding a witch's broom. 'Ooo, Miss, was you going to harsk Mrs. Beddin'ton 'oos cat 'ad kittens time I was took sick. . .'

'Mrs. Harradson!' René shot his arm out towards her, his finger pointing at her pale, narrow, now eerily jeering face.

'Please—shut—that—door!'

Mrs. Harradson fell back as if she had received a blow, the closing of the door coinciding with her eclipse.

Hester, her lips drawn tight over her teeth, rose to her feet, but not with an unladylike abruptness.

'I am afraid you are misbehaving,' she remarked.

René sat down, crossed his legs and looked at her with undiminished hostility. For him, she had been quite aware what she was doing, in her references to Stephen: it was she who had misbehaved—in her persistently ladylike way.