Fleur darted through the window into the morning-room.  There he came from the drawing-room, crossing the verandah, down the lawn; and the click of billiard-balls which, in listening for other sounds, she had ceased to hear, began again.  She shook herself, passed into the hall, and opened the drawing-room door.  Her mother was sitting on the sofa between the windows, her knees crossed, her head resting on a cushion, her lips half parted, her eyes half closed.  She looked extraordinarily handsome.

“Ah!  Here you are, Fleur!  Your father is beginning to fuss.”

“Where is he?”

“In the picture-gallery.  Go up!”

“What are you going to do to-morrow, Mother?”

“To-morrow?  I go up to London with your aunt.”

“I thought you might be.  Will you get me a quite plain parasol?” What colour?”

“Green.  They’re all going back, I suppose.”

“Yes, all; you will console your father.  Kiss me, then.”

Fleur crossed the room, stooped, received a kiss on her forehead, and went out past the impress of a form on the sofa-cushions in the other corner.  She ran up-stairs.

Fleur was by no means the old-fashioned daughter who demands the regulation of her parents’ lives in accordance with the standard imposed upon herself.  She claimed to regulate her own life, not those of others; besides, an unerring instinct for what was likely to advantage her own case was already at work.  In a disturbed domestic atmosphere the heart she had set on Jon would have a better chance.  None the less was she offended, as a flower by a crisping wind.  If that man had really been kissing her mother it was—­serious, and her father ought to know.  “Demain!” “All right!” And her mother going up to Town!  She turned into her bedroom and hung out of the window to cool her face, which had suddenly grown very hot.  Jon must be at the station by now!  What did her father know about Jon?  Probably everything—­pretty nearly!

She changed her dress, so as to look as if she had been in some time, and ran up to the gallery.

Soames was standing stubbornly still before his Alfred Stevens—­the picture he loved best.  He did not turn at the sound of the door, but she knew he had heard, and she knew he was hurt.  She came up softly behind him, put her arms round his neck, and poked her face over his shoulder till her cheek lay against his.  It was an advance which had never yet failed, but it failed her now, and she augured the worst.  “Well,” he said stonily, “so you’ve come!”

“Is that all,” murmured Fleur, “from a bad parent?” And she rubbed her cheek against his.

Soames shook his head so far as that was possible.

“Why do you keep me on tenterhooks like this, putting me off and off?”

“Darling, it was very harmless.”

“Harmless!  Much you know what’s harmless and what isn’t.”

Fleur dropped her arms.