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Manuel.
    It was three in the afternoon. Lord Guy and Mr Roger were still asleep, and Manuel had not put in an appearance, when the servants received a visitor.
    There was the sound of a silk skirt swishing down the area steps and then a rap at the kitchen door.
    â€˜It’s probably Lizzie’s reformer,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘Let us pretend there’s no one at home.’
    â€˜She might go up and knock at the street door and wake my lord,’ said Rainbird, going to the door.
    An extremely fat little lady stood on the step. She was dressed in a brown silk gown covered with a sealskin coat. Her face was very plump, and her eyes were almost buried in pads of fat.
    She twinkled up at the butler. ‘John, my love,’ she said with a charming laugh. ‘Don’t you recognize me?’
    Rainbird’s heart did a somersault. He knew that voice and that laugh. They both belonged to Felice, the lady’s maid who had broken his heart and gone to Brighton to get married. He looked wildly around, suspecting some trick, and expecting Felice to come dancing out from behind this matron’s fat back.
    â€˜It is I. C’est moi! Felice.’
    â€˜Come in, Felice,’ said Rainbird, backing away before her.
    While the others exclaimed and asked questions,Rainbird covertly studied the love of his life. He could not believe it was Felice. He closed his eyes, hearing her voice, willing this little fat lady to go away and leave the real Felice in her place. But when he opened his eyes, she was still there, laughing and preening and showing off her fur coat to Mrs Middleton. ‘And she used to be so silent,’ he marvelled.
    She talked on and on about how good her husband was. Her Jack was an alderman and doing nicely, thank you. She had picked up a great number of common English expressions, and her voice had coarsened.
    She rattled on non-stop for about an hour. Then she said teasingly to Rainbird, ‘My, but you’re the quiet one, John.’ She turned to the others and giggled. ‘Our John was quite spoony about me at one time, wasn’t you, mon cher ?’
    Rainbird gritted his teeth. He hated her. He had loved her with a fine and noble passion, a passion this horrible dumpy woman was coyly describing as ‘spoony’.
    Manuel came into the servants’ hall and said curtly, ‘Hock and seltzer for my lord.’
    â€˜Get it yourself,’ said Rainbird.
    Felice looked sharply at Manuel and spoke to him in rapid French. He looked back at her, his face impassive.
    â€˜He isn’t French,’ said Joseph. ‘He’s Spanish.’
    Felice raised her eyebrows but did not say any more. She kissed Rainbird, who flinched, on thecheek, and departed in a rustle of silk, leaving a cloud of musky perfume behind her.
    They all bustled about, avoiding Rainbird, feeling sorry for him. Only Mrs Middleton was glad. She still nursed a tendre for the butler. She had been hurt and had wept into her pillow when he had fallen in love with that woman. Now Rainbird had seen Felice in her true colours. It was awful what fat could do to a woman, thought Mrs Middleton, resolving then and there to buy herself a new corset come quarter-day.
    After a few hours of looking at the shops, Felice settled herself inside the Brighton coach with the comfortable feeling of a job well done. She enjoyed being plump, and her doting husband called her ‘a cosy armful’. But she had often thought of John Rainbird, and, although her practical French soul considered undying love without money a waste of time, her conscience had at last prompted her to do her best to throw cold water on Rainbird’s passion.
    With the vulgar personality she had briefly assumed left behind her in Clarges Street, she looked like a quiet and charming, if fat, lady.
    The coach rattled out over the cobbles. Felice remembered that odd servant, Manuel. She was sure he was French. But what happened at Number