“Very well,” replied Mr. Polteed, “we can do it.”

“What—­what is the manner between them?”

“I’ll read you what she says,” said Mr. Polteed, unlocking a bureau drawer and taking out a file of papers; “she sums it up somewhere confidentially.  Yes, here it is! ’17 very attractive—­conclude 47, longer in the tooth’ (slang for age, you know)—­’distinctly gone—­waiting his time—­17 perhaps holding off for terms, impossible to say without knowing more.  But inclined to think on the whole—­doesn’t know her mind—­likely to act on impulse some day.  Both have style.’”

“What does that mean?” said Soames between close lips.

“Well,” murmured Mr. Polteed with a smile, showing many white teeth, “an expression we use.  In other words, it’s not likely to be a weekend business—­they’ll come together seriously or not at all.”

“H’m!” muttered Soames, “that’s all, is it?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Polteed, “but quite promising.”

‘Spider!’ thought Soames.  “Good-day!”

He walked into the Green Park that he might cross to Victoria Station and take the Underground into the City.  For so late in January it was warm; sunlight, through the haze, sparkled on the frosty grass—­an illumined cobweb of a day.

Little spiders—­and great spiders!  And the greatest spinner of all, his own tenacity, for ever wrapping its cocoon of threads round any clear way out.  What was that fellow hanging round Irene for?  Was it really as Polteed suggested?  Or was Jolyon but taking compassion on her loneliness, as he would call it—­sentimental radical chap that he had always been?  If it were, indeed, as Polteed hinted!  Soames stood still.  It could not be!  The fellow was seven years older than himself, no better looking!  No richer!  What attraction had he?

‘Besides, he’s come back,’ he thought; ’that doesn’t look—–­I’ll go and see him!’ and, taking out a card, he wrote: 

“If you can spare half an hour some afternoon this week, I shall be at the Connoisseurs any day between 5.30 and 6, or I could come to the Hotch Potch if you prefer it.  I want to see you.—­S.  F.”

He walked up St. James’s Street and confided it to the porter at the Hotch Potch.

“Give Mr. Jolyon Forsyte this as soon as he comes in,” he said, and took one of the new motor cabs into the City....

Jolyon received that card the same afternoon, and turned his face towards the Connoisseurs.  What did Soames want now?  Had he got wind of Paris?  And stepping across St. James’s Street, he determined to make no secret of his visit.  ‘But it won’t do,’ he thought, ’to let him know she’s there, unless he knows already.’  In this complicated state of mind he was conducted to where Soames was drinking tea in a small bay-window.

“No tea, thanks,” said Jolyon, “but I’ll go on smoking if I may.”

The curtains were not yet drawn, though the lamps outside were lighted; the two cousins sat waiting on each other.