If Soames were to see him in the club it would be sure to come round to her that he wasn’t at the dentist’s at all.  He never knew a family where things ‘came round’ so.  Uneasily, amongst the green baize card-tables, a frown on his olive coloured face, his check trousers crossed, and patent-leather boots shining through the gloom, he sat biting his forefinger, and wondering where the deuce he was to get the money if Erotic failed to win the Lancashire Cup.

His thoughts turned gloomily to the Forsytes.  What a set they were!  There was no getting anything out of them—­at least, it was a matter of extreme difficulty.  They were so d—–­d particular about money matters; not a sportsman amongst the lot, unless it were George.  That fellow Soames, for instance, would have a ft if you tried to borrow a tenner from him, or, if he didn’t have a fit, he looked at you with his cursed supercilious smile, as if you were a lost soul because you were in want of money.

And that wife of his (Dartie’s mouth watered involuntarily), he had tried to be on good terms with her, as one naturally would with any pretty sister-in-law, but he would be cursed if the (he mentally used a coarse word)—­would have anything to say to him—­she looked at him, indeed, as if he were dirt—­and yet she could go far enough, he wouldn’t mind betting.  He knew women; they weren’t made with soft eyes and figures like that for nothing, as that fellow Soames would jolly soon find out, if there were anything in what he had heard about this Buccaneer Johnny.

Rising from his chair, Dartie took a turn across the room, ending in front of the looking-glass over the marble chimney-piece; and there he stood for a long time contemplating in the glass the reflection of his face.  It had that look, peculiar to some men, of having been steeped in linseed oil, with its waxed dark moustaches and the little distinguished commencements of side whiskers; and concernedly he felt the promise of a pimple on the side of his slightly curved and fattish nose.

In the meantime old Jolyon had found the remaining chair in Timothy’s commodious drawing-room.  His advent had obviously put a stop to the conversation, decided awkwardness having set in.  Aunt Juley, with her well-known kindheartedness, hastened to set people at their ease again.

“Yes, Jolyon,” she said, “we were just saying that you haven’t been here for a long time; but we mustn’t be surprised.  You’re busy, of course?  James was just saying what a busy time of year....”

“Was he?” said old Jolyon, looking hard at James.  “It wouldn’t be half so busy if everybody minded their own business.”

James, brooding in a small chair from which his knees ran uphill, shifted his feet uneasily, and put one of them down on the cat, which had unwisely taken refuge from old Jolyon beside him.

“Here, you’ve got a cat here,” he said in an injured voice, withdrawing his foot nervously as he felt it squeezing into the soft, furry body.