“But why?” he said.  Then, as a sportsman himself, was sorry he had asked.  The mask of his mother’s face was all disturbed; and he burst out: 

“All right, Mother, don’t tell me!  Only, what does it mean?”

“A divorce, Val, I’m afraid.”

Val uttered a queer little grunt, and looked quickly at his uncle—­that uncle whom he had been taught to look on as a guarantee against the consequences of having a father, even against the Dartie blood in his own veins.  The flat-checked visage seemed to wince, and this upset him.

“It won’t be public, will it?”

So vividly before him had come recollection of his own eyes glued to the unsavoury details of many a divorce suit in the Public Press.

“Can’t it be done quietly somehow?  It’s so disgusting for—­for mother, and—­and everybody.”

“Everything will be done as quietly as it can, you may be sure.”

“Yes—­but, why is it necessary at all?  Mother doesn’t want to marry again.”

Himself, the girls, their name tarnished in the sight of his schoolfellows and of Crum, of the men at Oxford, of—­Holly!  Unbearable!  What was to be gained by it?

“Do you, Mother?” he said sharply.

Thus brought face to face with so much of her own feeling by the one she loved best in the world, Winifred rose from the Empire chair in which she had been sitting.  She saw that her son would be against her unless he was told everything; and, yet, how could she tell him?  Thus, still plucking at the green brocade, she stared at Soames.  Val, too, stared at Soames.  Surely this embodiment of respectability and the sense of property could not wish to bring such a slur on his own sister!

Soames slowly passed a little inlaid paperknife over the smooth surface of a marqueterie table; then, without looking at his nephew, he began: 

“You don’t understand what your mother has had to put up with these twenty years.  This is only the last straw, Val.”  And glancing up sideways at Winifred, he added: 

“Shall I tell him?”

Winifred was silent.  If he were not told, he would be against her!  Yet, how dreadful to be told such things of his own father!  Clenching her lips, she nodded.

Soames spoke in a rapid, even voice: 

“He has always been a burden round your mother’s neck.  She has paid his debts over and over again; he has often been drunk, abused and threatened her; and now he is gone to Buenos Aires with a dancer.”  And, as if distrusting the efficacy of those words on the boy, he went on quickly: 

“He took your mother’s pearls to give to her.”

Val jerked up his hand, then.  At that signal of distress Winifred cried out: 

“That’ll do, Soames—­stop!”

In the boy, the Dartie and the Forsyte were struggling.  For debts, drink, dancers, he had a certain sympathy; but the pearls—­no!  That was too much!  And suddenly he found his mother’s hand squeezing his.