“He’s madly in love with Paula, too. I’ve heard Aaron Hancock chaffing him about some sonnet cycle, and it isn’t difficult to guess the inspiration. And Terrence — the Irishman, you know — he’s mildly in love with her. They can’t help it, you see; and can you blame them?”

“She surely deserves it all,” Graham murmured, although vaguely hurt in that the addle-pated, alphabet-obsessed, epicurean anarchist of an Irishman who gloried in being a loafer and a pensioner should even mildly be in love with the Little Lady. “She is most deserving of all men’s admiration,” he continued smoothly. “From the little I’ve seen of her she’s quite remarkable and most charming.”

“She’s my half-sister,”