Soames read, on Iseeum Club paper, these words: 

’You will not get chance to insult in my own again.  I am leaving country to-morrow.  It’s played out.  I’m tired of being insulted by you.  You’ve brought on yourself.  No self-respecting man can stand it.  I shall not ask you for anything again.  Good-bye.  I took the photograph of the two girls.  Give them my love.  I don’t care what your family say.  It’s all their doing.  I’m going to live new life.  ‘M.D.’

This after-dinner note had a splotch on it not yet quite dry.  He looked at Winifred—­the splotch had clearly come from her; and he checked the words:  ‘Good riddance!’ Then it occurred to him that with this letter she was entering that very state which he himself so earnestly desired to quit—­the state of a Forsyte who was not divorced.

Winifred had turned away, and was taking a long sniff from a little gold-topped bottle.  A dull commiseration, together with a vague sense of injury, crept about Soames’ heart.  He had come to her to talk of his own position, and get sympathy, and here was she in the same position, wanting of course to talk of it, and get sympathy from him.  It was always like that!  Nobody ever seemed to think that he had troubles and interests of his own.  He folded up the letter with the splotch inside, and said: 

“What’s it all about, now?”

Winifred recited the story of the pearls calmly.

“Do you think he’s really gone, Soames?  You see the state he was in when he wrote that.”

Soames who, when he desired a thing, placated Providence by pretending that he did not think it likely to happen, answered: 

“I shouldn’t think so.  I might find out at his Club.”

“If George is there,” said Winifred, “he would know.”

“George?” said Soames; “I saw him at his father’s funeral.”

“Then he’s sure to be there.”

Soames, whose good sense applauded his sister’s acumen, said grudgingly:  “Well, I’ll go round.  Have you said anything in Park Lane?”

“I’ve told Emily,” returned Winifred, who retained that ‘chic’ way of describing her mother.  “Father would have a fit.”

Indeed, anything untoward was now sedulously kept from James.  With another look round at the furniture, as if to gauge his sister’s exact position, Soames went out towards Piccadilly.  The evening was drawing in—­a touch of chill in the October haze.  He walked quickly, with his close and concentrated air.  He must get through, for he wished to dine in Soho.  On hearing from the hall porter at the Iseeum that Mr. Dartie had not been in to-day, he looked at the trusty fellow and decided only to ask if Mr. George Forsyte was in the Club.  He was.  Soames, who always looked askance at his cousin George, as one inclined to jest at his expense, followed the pageboy, slightly reassured by the thought that George had just lost his father.  He must have come in for about thirty thousand, besides what he had under that settlement of Roger’s, which had avoided death duty.  He found George in a bow-window, staring out across a half-eaten plate of muffins.  His tall, bulky, black-clothed figure loomed almost threatening, though preserving still the supernatural neatness of the racing man.  With a faint grin on his fleshy face, he said: