Sublime

Pullings pointed out the principal charms of the island: Holdfast Tom, Stone Top, and Old Joan Point – he had landed several times, and he did wish he could show the Doctor the bird that haunted Diana’s Peak, a cross between an owl and a poll-parrot, with a curious bill.

Indeed it is Julia Mills, peevish and fine, with a black man to carry cards and letters to her on a golden salver, and a copper-coloured woman in linen, with a bright handkerchief round her head, to serve her Tiffin in her dressing-room.

It was a risk to mention the Royal Shakespeare Company, and RADA, but the Discreet Mourners woman failed to link Astrid Miller, Audrey Hepburn’s Friend One, with the Astrid Fellowes who had been at the centre of a scandal in the 1970s and had gone mad on stage at the National, midway through a matinee of Macbeth.

He showed the white object under his arm, which was a tiny Maltese puppy, one of nature’s most naive toys. ‘It is painful to me to see these creatures that are bred merely as pets,’ said Dorothea, whose opinion was forming itself that very moment (as opinions will) under the heat of irritation.

and veiled Moorish beauties (I suppose they are beauties)