“From June Forsyte.”

It had come to her as an inspiration that if he thought she knew, or were on the edge of knowledge, he would tell her.

Soames was startled, but she had underrated his caution and tenacity.

“If you know,” he said coldly, “why do you plague me?”

Fleur saw that she had overreached herself.

“I don’t want to plague you, darling.  As you say, why want to know more? 
Why want to know anything of that ‘small’ mystery—­Je m’en fiche, as
Profond says?”

“That chap!” said Soames profoundly.

That chap, indeed, played a considerable, if invisible, part this summer—­for he had not turned up again.  Ever since the Sunday when Fleur had drawn attention to him prowling on the lawn, Soames had thought of him a good deal, and always in connection with Annette, for no reason, except that she was looking handsomer than for some time past.  His possessive instinct, subtle, less formal, more elastic since the War, kept all misgiving underground.  As one looks on some American river, quiet and pleasant, knowing that an alligator perhaps is lying in the mud with his snout just raised and indistinguishable from a snag of wood—­so Soames looked on the river of his own existence, subconscious of Monsieur Profond, refusing to see more than the suspicion of his snout.  He had at this epoch in his life practically all he wanted, and was as nearly happy as his nature would permit.  His senses were at rest; his affections found all the vent they needed in his daughter; his collection was well known, his money well invested; his health excellent, save for a touch of liver now and again; he had not yet begun to worry seriously about what would happen after death, inclining to think that nothing would happen.  He resembled one of his own gilt-edged securities, and to knock the gilt off by seeing anything he could avoid seeing would be, he felt instinctively, perverse and retrogressive.  Those two crumpled rose-leaves, Fleur’s caprice and Monsieur Profond’s snout, would level away if he lay on them industriously.

That evening Chance, which visits the lives of even the best-invested Forsytes, put a clue into Fleur’s hands.  Her father came down to dinner without a handkerchief, and had occasion to blow his nose.

“I’ll get you one, dear,” she had said, and ran upstairs.  In the sachet where she sought for it—­an old sachet of very faded silk—­there were two compartments:  one held handkerchiefs; the other was buttoned, and contained something flat and hard.  By some childish impulse Fleur unbuttoned it.  There was a frame and in it a photograph of herself as a little girl.  She gazed at it, fascinated, as one is by one’s own presentment.  It slipped under her fidgeting thumb, and she saw that another photograph was behind.  She pressed her own down further, and perceived a face, which she seemed to know, of a young woman, very good-looking, in a very old style of evening dress.