Soames shook his head.

“No,” he stammered, “she—­she’s left me!”

Emily deserted the mirror before which she was standing.  Her tall, full figure lost its majesty and became very human as she came running over to Soames.

“My dear boy!  My dear boy!”

She put her lips to his forehead, and stroked his hand.

James, too, had turned full towards his son; his face looked older.

“Left you?” he said.  “What d’you mean—­left you?  You never told me she was going to leave you.”

Soames answered surlily:  “How could I tell?  What’s to be done?”

James began walking up and down; he looked strange and stork-like without a coat.  “What’s to be done!” he muttered.  “How should I know what’s to be done?  What’s the good of asking me?  Nobody tells me anything, and then they come and ask me what’s to be done; and I should like to know how I’m to tell them!  Here’s your mother, there she stands; she doesn’t say anything.  What I should say you’ve got to do is to follow her..”

Soames smiled; his peculiar, supercilious smile had never before looked pitiable.

“I don’t know where she’s gone,” he said.

“Don’t know where she’s gone!” said James.  “How d’you mean, don’t know where she’s gone?  Where d’you suppose she’s gone?  She’s gone after that young Bosinney, that’s where she’s gone.  I knew how it would be.”

Soames, in the long silence that followed, felt his mother pressing his hand.  And all that passed seemed to pass as though his own power of thinking or doing had gone to sleep.

His father’s face, dusky red, twitching as if he were going to cry, and words breaking out that seemed rent from him by some spasm in his soul.

“There’ll be a scandal; I always said so.”  Then, no one saying anything:  “And there you stand, you and your mother!”

And Emily’s voice, calm, rather contemptuous:  “Come, now, James!  Soames will do all that he can.”

And James, staring at the floor, a little brokenly:  “Well, I can’t help you; I’m getting old.  Don’t you be in too great a hurry, my boy.”

And his mother’s voice again:  “Soames will do all he can to get her back.  We won’t talk of it.  It’ll all come right, I dare say.”

And James:  “Well, I can’t see how it can come right.  And if she hasn’t gone off with that young Bosinney, my advice to you is not to listen to her, but to follow her and get her back.”

Once more Soames felt his mother stroking his hand, in token of her approval, and as though repeating some form of sacred oath, he muttered between his teeth:  “I will!”

All three went down to the drawing-room together.  There, were gathered the three girls and Dartie; had Irene been present, the family circle would have been complete.

James sank into his armchair, and except for a word of cold greeting to Dartie, whom he both despised and dreaded, as a man likely to be always in want of money, he said nothing till dinner was announced.  Soames, too, was silent; Emily alone, a woman of cool courage, maintained a conversation with Winifred on trivial subjects.  She was never more composed in her manner and conversation than that evening.