THE Fulton household had always been short of money, for Dick spent too much himself to leave anything for entertaining; thus Victoria had very little experience of lunch parties. Since she had left the Holts she hardly remembered a bourgeois meal. The little affair on the Wednesday was therefore provocative of much thought. Mutton was dismissed as common, beef in any form as coarse; Laura's suggestion (for Laura and Augusta had been called in) of a savoury sauerkraut ('mit Blutwurst, Frankfurter, Leberwurst, etc.'), was also dismissed. Both servants took a keen interest in the occasion. 'But why no gentleman come?' asked Laura, who was clearly ill-disposed to do her best for her own sex. 'In the house I was . . .' began Augusta . . . then she froze up under Victoria's eye. Her mistress still had a strain of the prig in her. Then Augusta suggested hors d'oeuvres, smoked salmon, anchovies, olives, radishes; Laura forced forward fowl _à la Milanaise_ to be preceded by baked John Dory cayenne. Then Augusta in a moment of inspiration thought of French beans and vegetable marrow . . . stuffed with chestnuts. The three women laughed, Laura clapped her hands with the sheer joy of the creative artist. When Victoria came into the dining-room at half-past twelve she was almost dazzled by her own magnificence. Neither the Carlton nor the Savoy could equal the blaze of her plate, the brilliant polish of her tablecloths. The dahlias blazed dark red in cut glass by the side of pale belated roses from the garden. On the sideboard fat peaches were heaped in a modern Lowestoft bowl, and amber-coloured plums lay like portly dowagers in velvet. A few minutes before the hour Zoé and Lissa arrived together. They were nervous; not on account of Victoria's spread, for they were of the upper stratum, but because they were in a house. Accustomed to their small flats off Shaftesbury Avenue, where tiny kitchens jostled with bedroom and boudoir, they were frightened by the suggestion of a vast basement out of which floated the savoury aroma of the John Dory baking. Victoria tried to put them at their ease, took their parasols away and showed them into the boudoir. There they sat in a triangle, the hot sun blazing in upon them, stiff and starched with the formality of those who are seldom formal. 'Have a Manhattan cocktail?' asked the hostess. 'No thanks; very hot, isn't it?' said Lissa in her most refined manner. She was looking very pretty, dark, slim and snaky in her close-fitting lemon coloured frock. 'Very hot,' chimed in Zoé. She was sitting unnecessarily erect. Her flat French back seemed to abhor the easy chair. Her tight hair, her trim hands, her well boned collar, everything breathed neatness, well laced stays, a full complement of hooks and eyes. She might have been the sedate wife of a prosperous French tradesman. 'Yes, it is hot,' said Victoria.