In the days before June’s engagement, when she and Mrs. Soames were always together, he had seen enough of Irene to feel the spell she cast over men.  She was not a flirt, not even a coquette—­words dear to the heart of his generation, which loved to define things by a good, broad, inadequate word—­but she was dangerous.  He could not say why.  Tell him of a quality innate in some women—­a seductive power beyond their own control!  He would but answer:  ‘Humbug!’ She was dangerous, and there was an end of it.  He wanted to close his eyes to that affair.  If it was, it was; he did not want to hear any more about it—­he only wanted to save June’s position and her peace of mind.  He still hoped she might once more become a comfort to himself.

And so he had written.  He got little enough out of the answer.  As to what young Jolyon had made of the interview, there was practically only the queer sentence:  ‘I gather that he’s in the stream.’  The stream!  What stream?  What was this new-fangled way of talking?

He sighed, and folded the last of the papers under the flap of the bag; he knew well enough what was meant.

June came out of the dining-room, and helped him on with his summer coat.  From her costume, and the expression of her little resolute face, he saw at once what was coming.

“I’m going with you,” she said.

“Nonsense, my dear; I go straight into the City.  I can’t have you racketting about!”

“I must see old Mrs. Smeech.”

“Oh, your precious ’lame ducks!” grumbled out old Jolyon.  He did not believe her excuse, but ceased his opposition.  There was no doing anything with that pertinacity of hers.

At Victoria he put her into the carriage which had been ordered for himself—­a characteristic action, for he had no petty selfishnesses.

“Now, don’t you go tiring yourself, my darling,” he said, and took a cab on into the city.

June went first to a back-street in Paddington, where Mrs. Smeech, her ‘lame duck,’ lived—­an aged person, connected with the charring interest; but after half an hour spent in hearing her habitually lamentable recital, and dragooning her into temporary comfort, she went on to Stanhope Gate.  The great house was closed and dark.

She had decided to learn something at all costs.  It was better to face the worst, and have it over.  And this was her plan:  To go first to Phil’s aunt, Mrs. Baynes, and, failing information there, to Irene herself.  She had no clear notion of what she would gain by these visits.

At three o’clock she was in Lowndes Square.  With a woman’s instinct when trouble is to be faced, she had put on her best frock, and went to the battle with a glance as courageous as old Jolyon’s itself.  Her tremors had passed into eagerness.

Mrs. Baynes, Bosinney’s aunt (Louisa was her name), was in her kitchen when June was announced, organizing the cook, for she was an excellent housewife, and, as Baynes always said, there was ’a lot in a good dinner.’  He did his best work after dinner.  It was Baynes who built that remarkably fine row of tall crimson houses in Kensington which compete with so many others for the title of ‘the ugliest in London.’