"Women having the vote," she says it without hesitation, excited still that it came to England only a year or so after her departure. "The fact that our rights are more established, that we no longer need to depend on our husbands for things."

To think, a decade later and it could have been Mary inheriting Downton. How quickly things changed. "But the fight starts all over again, doesn't it? In America?"

She turns the book to face him, an overview of segregation. She's never thought of this, never so much as met a coloured person though she has caught sight of a few in London. "It seems unfair that anyone should be unable to represent themselves."