Meeting Maxim de Winter

Mrs Van Hopper spots Maxim de Winter in the restaurant and insists on introducing herself. She sends the narrator to fetch a letter from her nephew as a pretext. The narrator returns to find Maxim already sitting with Mrs Van Hopper. He is polite but distant, and when Mrs Van Hopper presses him about Manderley, he makes a dry joke about Ethelred the Unready. He then turns to the narrator, asking her opinion of Monte Carlo, and she feels his eyes on her, puzzled and reflective. Mrs Van Hopper's chatter continues, and Maxim eventually escapes when a page-boy announces a dressmaker. He leaves with a sardonic remark about the family motto, 'He travels the fastest who travels alone.'