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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 345261" data-attributes="member: 23">A Pair Of Exiles continuedUpstairs is equally exciting. Richard and Marjorie are generously featured in this episode - always a good thing. First they, too, piece things together based on James’s mounting debts and frequent absences from his base (they’re nothing if not well-connected). James eventually comes clean about his relationship with a girl and the trouble they’re in. She’s “someone you know”, he ventures. Marjorie’s horror at the idea she might be the daughter of friends of theirs is nothing compared with the shock she displays when he expands by saying she used to work for them, a former under housemaid. Marjorie quietly says Sarah’s name, but this time there’s at least as much sorrow as horror. Perhaps even pity. I’d say this is my favourite Marjorie episode to date. Rachel Gurney is wonderful, and the writing does the character real justice. She’s forthright and assertive, yet not in a way that feels anachronistic or at odds with what we know about Marjorie. Despite Richard’s insistence that these are conversations for men to have, not for women’s ears, Marjorie twice refuses to remove herself from the room: firstly when James’s Colonel visits to express his concerns, then again when Sir Geoffrey Dillon sweeps in to clean things up with his usual icy flair. Perfectly in keeping with their need to keep up appearances, by the time Colonel Winter enters the room, Richard and Marjorie are one unit, warmly greeting him with no sign of tension. Sir Geoffrey, however, tests Marjorie’s good graces. It’s wonderful to see him back. Unplanned pregnancies for unwed mothers with ties to the Bellamys seem to be his speciality. We last saw him at the end of his first appearance, coldly sending poor Mary Stokes off to her fate. Sarah - being exiled to a cottage on the Southwell estate where she will give birth and remain in service when she is well enough - ostensibly gets a better deal than Mary, though it could also be argued that Mary at least had a chance to make her own future choices while Sarah is now effectively trapped in service to the Bellamys. Naturally, Sir Geoffrey also takes the opportunity to remind Sarah of her place: her time spent service, and the fact that “the theatrical profession is not generally considered respectable” (being such a blank slate and with everything we see pointing to him being brutal, passionless and an intellectual bully, Sir Geoffrey could be a contender for an all-time favourite UpDown character. Part of me hopes we don’t find out too much about him). Marjorie is positively serene during this exchange. When Sir Geoffrey’s crisply matter of fact presentation of Sarah’s future, and Richard telling Sarah it’s for her own good provoke her into an outburst, it’s Marjorie who resolves the situation by speaking slowly and calmly to Sarah until she sits and listens once more. Once Sarah has left the room, it’s Sir Geoffrey’s coup de grace - James’s relocation to a regiment in India - that pushes Marjorie into an outburst:The upper hand his, as always, Sir Geoffrey departs with Richard’s apologies for her discourteousness. Sir Geoffrey brushes off any such concern by describing her (perfectly) as “a lioness protecting her young” who “is entitled to show her claws”. By the time Richard returns to the room, Marjorie has calmed down enough to say she’s sorry, the shame of her loss of face clearly weighing heavily. He accepts and order is restored, the men having made the decisions; the women, the young and the servants having no choice but to accept. By episode’s end, things are quite different in the staff hall. Hudson swears them to secrecy for the sake of the Bellamy name. Mrs Bridges cries over Sarah’s situation. And Sarah leaves, beaten down into line. And this time with no room for doubt that the fear she admits to is very real. It’s a corker of an episode.</blockquote>

Verification: What month follows July?