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Besides the Cushats, Godmother had a house in London, where there were broad flights of stairs with shallow steps, and vistas of reception rooms with polished floors and beautiful pictures and cabinets filled with eastern curios. Godmother’s own boudoir was a remote hushed corner, where in midwinter forced lilac drugged the air with subtle sweetness.

It was here that Philomène often took tea with her, and when full justice had been done to the toast and cakes, Isolde would take her seat in a low chair before the fire, and Philomène, curling herself up on the hearth-rug, much as Queen Mab might have done had she been invited, would lay her clasped hands in her godmother’s lap, and begin to “want to know.”

“Godmother,” she had said on one of these occasions, “I want to know if it is cruel to keep caged birds. Do you remember when you took me to church with you a few Sundays ago, and they went round singing the Litany? Well, just as the choir-men passed me they were saying, ‘and to show thy pity upon all prisoners and captives,’ and I thought at once of Master Mustardseed.”