“The worst part of it was,” hissed her ladyship, hitting her croquet ball with such vigour that it shot effortlessly through three hoops, “that the man was stark naked!”

“Really?” said Lord Fenneltree, his attention caught. He glanced at Adrian, who had kept this part of the story from him.

“Positively disgusting,” said her ladyship.

“Stark naked, eh?” repeated Lord Fenneltree, obviously fascinated. “But why would he be stark naked with an elephant?”

“The lower classes,” said Lady Fenneltree, “sometimes do the most peculiar things, particularly when they are under the influence of alcohol.”

Throughout this conversation Jonquil bad been standing staring into space. Now she fixed Adrian with a melting stare.

“I have never seen a naked man,” she said.

“Jonquil!” said Lord Fenneltree, greatly shocked. “I should hope you have not. There will be plenty of time for that.”

The Conversation succesfully diverted Lady Fenneltree’s attention from Rosy’s trumpeting, but it left Adrian feeling acutely embarrassed.

He was now convinced that Lord Fenneltree’s idea was doomed to failure. Apart from anything else Lady Fenneltree was clearly not the sort of woman to greet with enthusiasm the revelation that for the last few days she had been entertaining in her midst the young man who, stark naked, had attacked the local hunt. He endeavoured once again to put his point of view to Lord Fenneltree, but his lordship was adamant.

“Just let me go quietly away with Rosy,” Adrian pleaded. “I assure you that when your wife finds out she’s going to go off like a volcano.”

“Nonsense!” said his lordship airily. “Why, when she sees our splendid entrance into the ballroom she’ll be so captivated she’ll be speechless.”

Adrian could not conceive of any set of circumstances that would render Lady Fenneltree speechless.

“But when she finds out who I am,” he protested, “and when she finds out about Rosy . . . and . . . and . . . when she finds out about the fruit and the peacocks’ tails . . .” His voice trailed away. He was overcome by the mental image of Lady Fenneltree finding out all these things simultaneously.

“Dear boy,” said his lordship, “don’t worry. You are a natural worrier. I’ve noticed it before. It’s terribly fatiguing for the nerves. Why, when that elephant enters the ballroom my wife—who is, as you will have noticed, perceptive to a degree—will realise instantly that no other ball in the district has ever had an elephant I tell you, dear boy, it will make her evening.”

It did make Lady Fenneltree’s evening, but not quite in the way that he had intended.

So the great day dawned and the whole house hummed with activity. The ballroom into which Rosy was to make her entrance was a hundred and fifty feet long and fifty feet wide. At one end were two massive carved oak doors that led out on to the stone flagged terrace. It was through these that Rosy was to appear. Above the doors, like a swallow’s nest on the wall, was the gallery in which the musicians were to foregather. The whole setting was lit by twenty-four gigantic chandeliers that hung in two rows down the length of the ballroom, shimmering and glittering like upside-down Christmas trees. The floor of the ballroom had been polished and waxed so that it gleamed like a brown lake, and at the end of the room, opposite the great doors, there were long trestle tables covered with snow-white cloths. On them were great silver bowls of fruit; haunches of cold venison; lobster tails in aspic, gleaming like gigantic red flies in amber; enormous cold pies with autumn coloured crusts, stuffed with grouse, pheasant and quail; smoked eels crouching on beds of parsley and watercress; gigantic smoked salmon, each wearing a carefully embossed coat of mayonnaise studded with black pearls of caviar; and in the centre, the pièce de résistance, a whole roast pig, beautifully decorated, with a rosy apple in its mouth. Surrounding these snacks were great glass bowls of punch, silver buckets full of champagne, stately rows of claret and port to keep the gentlemen happy, and fresh orange juice, lemon juice, peach juice and pink and white ice-creams with which to revive the ladies after the rigours of the waltz or the valeta. As the day wore on the activity grew more and more feverish, and Adrian spent his time either in the stables, lecturing Rosy on the part the was to play, or wandering into the ballroom and gazing at the vast expanse of shining parquet with a feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach.

Presently, up the moonlit drive, clopped and tinkled the first of the carriages, carrying bevies of handsome, be-whiskered men and great colourful scented clouds of women. The band had taken up its position in the minstrels’ gallery and was playing soft, soothing arrival music. Adrian, morosely drinking punch, was mentally cursing his uncle, Lord Fenneltree and Rosy for having inveigled him into this situation. But his second glass had a warming effect, and so he had a third. He had just made up his mind to go and ask Jonquil to dance when a large, be-whiskered individual came striding up, calling loudly for a drink. For a moment Adrian did not recognise him in his finery and then, suddenly, went cold all over. The man standing next to him was the Master of the Monkspepper Hunt—fortunately too preoccupied in swilling down punch to take much notice of his surroundings. Adrian, with a handkerchief held over his face, crept out of the ballroom undetected and started to search frantically for Lord Fenneltree. Eventually he managed to find him and, with some difficulty, prise him away from his guests.

“What is it . . . what’s the matter?” asked his lordship irritably.

“Look here,” hissed Adrian frantically, “You’ve got to call this off. D’you realise who’s here?”

“Who?” asked his lordship.

“The Master of the Monkspepper Hunt, that’s who,” said Adrian.

“Well, I knew that,” said his lordship, surprised. “I invited him.”

“You invited him?” asked Adrian incredulously. “But what do you think he’s going to say when he sees Rosy?”

“Ha, ha,” said his lordship. “That’s why I invited him, dear boy, to see what he would say.”

“You must be mad,” said Adrian desperately. “Don’t you realise that the last time he met Rosy she picked him up in her trunk and hurled him to the ground? What d’you think he’s going to say when he sees her here?”

“I think it will be very diverting,” said his lordship.

“But he threatened to imprison me,” said Adrian.

“Oh, don’t you worry about old Darcey,” said his lordship airily, “I’ll soon smooth him down.”

Having seen his lordship’s complete inability to smooth Lady Fenneltree down, Adrian could imagine how effective his intervention with the Master of the Hunt would be.

“Now, now, my dear boy,” said his lordship, you’re starting to worry again. Desist, I implore you. We shall need cool heads for the job ahead of us, cool, sober heads. I’ll call you in half an hour and we’ll get changed. I can hardly wait to see the effect.”

He drifted away before Adrian, panic-stricken and incoherent, could stop him.

The party was in full swing now, and the ballroom looked like a great, moving flowerbed as the couples danced to and fro over its gleaming surface. The wine and the punch were flowing freely, so that many of those gentlemen who had arrived with pale uninteresting complexions were now flushed and rosy, and those who had arrived flushed and rosy were now congested to a phenomenal degree. Ladies drooped exhausted in corners, fanning themselves vigorously and calling plaintively, like baby birds, for ice-creams or lemon squash. Moodily Adrian sent a footman for champagne, and spent the next half hour endeavouring to forget what was about to take place. But the champagne settled in his stomach like a cold, leaden bolt of doom, He was just wondering whether to try the punch again, when Lord Fenneltree materialised unnervingly at his elbow.