15When Flory arrived at the Club he found the Lackersteens in an unusually morose mood. Mrs Lackersteen was sitting, as usual, in the best place under the punkah, and was reading the Civil List, the Debrett of Burma. She was in a bad temper with her husband, who had defied her by ordering a ‘large peg’ as soon as he reached the Club, and was further defying her by reading the Pink’un. Elizabeth was alone in the stuffy little library, turning over the pages of an old copy of Blackwood’s.
Since parting with Flory, Elizabeth had had a very disagreeable adventure. She had come out of her bath and was half-way through dressing for dinner when her uncle had suddenly appeared in her room – pretext, to hear some more about the day’s shooting – and begun pinching her leg in a way that simply could
