“I don’t know that I noticed her.”

“Dear, I saw the corner of your eye.”

“You see everything—­and a great deal more, it seems to me!”

“What’s her husband like?  He must be your first cousin, if your fathers were brothers.”

“Dead, for all I know,” said Soames, with sudden vehemence.  “I haven’t seen him for twenty years.”

“What was he?”

“A painter.”

“That’s quite jolly.”

The words:  “If you want to please me you’ll put those people out of your head,” sprang to Soames’ lips, but he choked them back—­he must not let her see his feelings.

“He once insulted me,” he said.

Her quick eyes rested on his face.

“I see!  You didn’t avenge it, and it rankles.  Poor Father!  You let me have a go!”

It was really like lying in the dark with a mosquito hovering above his face.  Such pertinacity in Fleur was new to him, and, as they reached the hotel, he said grimly: 

“I did my best.  And that’s enough about these people.  I’m going up till dinner.”

“I shall sit here.”

With a parting look at her extended in a chair—­a look half-resentful, half-adoring—­Soames moved into the lift and was transported to their suite on the fourth floor.  He stood by the window of the sitting-room which gave view over Hyde Park, and drummed a finger on its pane.  His feelings were confused, tetchy, troubled.  The throb of that old wound, scarred over by Time and new interests, was mingled with displeasure and anxiety, and a slight pain in his chest where that nougat stuff had disagreed.  Had Annette come in?  Not that she was any good to him in such a difficulty.  Whenever she had questioned him about his first marriage, he had always shut her up; she knew nothing of it, save that it had been the great passion of his life, and his marriage with herself but domestic makeshift.  She had always kept the grudge of that up her sleeve, as it were, and used it commercially.  He listened.  A sound—­the vague murmur of a woman’s movements—­was coming through the door.  She was in.  He tapped.

“Who?”

“I,” said Soames.

She had been changing her frock, and was still imperfectly clothed; a striking figure before her glass.  There was a certain magnificence about her arms, shoulders, hair, which had darkened since he first knew her, about the turn of her neck, the silkiness of her garments, her dark-lashed, greyblue eyes—­she was certainly as handsome at forty as she had ever been.  A fine possession, an excellent housekeeper, a sensible and affectionate enough mother.  If only she weren’t always so frankly cynical about the relations between them!  Soames, who had no more real affection for her than she had for him, suffered from a kind of English grievance in that she had never dropped even the thinnest veil of sentiment over their partnership.  Like most of his countrymen