Jake shrugged, in the way that only nine-year-old children can manage – and usually male children at that, girls not being permitted the same kind of insouciance.

I sometimes imagine there is a clerk behind a desk situated between the brain and the mouth. It is his job to examine utterances on their way out, and stamp them with approval or send them back for reconsideration. If such a clerk exists, mine must be very harried and overworked; and on occasion he puts his head down on the desk in despair, letting things pass without so much as a second glance.

It is not easy to fling oneself down stairs in a skirt; there is always the risk that you will tangle your legs and go headlong. But I made it.

It’s a wonderful feeling to have one’s brain stretched and tested, to know both that one has knowledge, and that one is gaining more.

All hail that bane of the upper class, a scene. The spectre of being publicly shamed.

Entomologists trap insects in their killing jars and then pin their corpses to cards, and no one utters a single squeak of protest. For that matter, let a gentleman hunt a tiger for its skin, and everyone applauds his courage. But to shoot a dragon for science? That, for some reason, is cruel.

You may think you see plenty of stars, friend reader, but you are wrong. Night is both blacker and more brilliant than you can imagine, and the sky a glory that puts to shame the most splendid jewels at Renwick’s. Up in the mountains, where the air is crisper than the humid atmosphere of Scirland, I beheld a beauty I had never before seen.

But rumour is a creature with many heads and no body, and I had no way to hunt it, any more than I could smooth over matters with my new relations.

The hunt for spouses is an activity on a par with fox-hunting or hawking, though the weapons and dramatis personae differ. Just as grizzled old men know the habits of hares and quail, so do elegant society gossips know every titbit about the year’s eligible men and women.

If you wish, gentle reader, you may augment your mental tableau with dramatic orchestral accompaniment.