If he surmised that he travelled alone in appearance only, it was with no evident concern or astonishment.  If his mind was uneasy, oppressed by a nightmarish burden of half-knowledge, guesses, and premonition, it was not apparent to the general observer.  His most eloquent gesture was when, from time to time, he tamped an ancient wooden pipe with a fingertip that wasn’t as calloused as he could have wished, philosophically sucked in strangling fumes of rankest shag and, ignoring his company in the carriage as became a British-made manservant, returned jaded, gentle eyes to those darkling vistas of autumnal landscape that were forever radiating away from the window like spokes of a gigantic wheel.

Alighting in the first dark of evening at the station for Frampton Court, he suffered himself to be herded, with a half-score more, into the omnibus provided for other bodyservants to arriving guests.  Even to these compeers he found little to say:  a loud lot, imbued with the rowdy spirit of the new day; whereas Nogam was hopelessly of the old school—­in the new word, he dated—­though his form was admittedly unimpeachable.  And if because of this he was made fun of more or less openly, to an extent that added shades of resignation to his countenance, secretly he commanded considerable respect.

Neither was Victor, with all the ill-will in the world, able to find fault with Nogam’s services in his new office.  The most finished of self-effacing valets, he knew just what to do and did it without being told; and when he spoke it was only because he had been spoken to or commissioned to convey a message.

Victor watched him from every angle, overt and covert, but had his trouble for his pains; Nogam, observed in a mirror, when Victor’s back was turned, went about his business with no more betrayal of personal feeling or independent mentality than when waiting upon his master face to face.  Victor could have kicked him for sheer resentment of his pattern virtues.  When all was said and done, it was damned irritating. . . .

In the servants’ hall he religiously kept his ears open and his mouth shut.  And, listening, he learned.  For some things said in his hearing were distinctly not pretty, and made one wonder if Prince Victor’s deep-rooted confidence in an England mortally cankered with social discontent were not grounded in a surprising familiarity with backstairs morale.  Other observations, again, were merely ribald, some were humorous, while all were enlightening.

Not a few of the company had seen domestic service in great houses before the war; they knew what was what and—­more to the point—­what wasn’t.  One gathered that this pretentious country home fell within the latter classification.  Here, it was stated, anybody could buy his way into favour:  the more bounding the bounder the brighter his chances of success at Frampton Court.