Jolyon, Swithin, Roger all gone, and he would be ninety in August!  And there was Soames married again to a French girl.  The French were a queer lot, but they made good mothers, he had heard.  Things changed!  They said this German Emperor was here for the funeral, his telegram to old Kruger had been in shocking taste.  He should not be surprised if that chap made trouble some day.  Change!  H’m!  Well, they must look after themselves when he was gone:  he didn’t know where he’d be!  And now Emily had asked Dartie to lunch, with Winifred and Imogen, to meet Soames’ wife—­she was always doing something.  And there was Irene living with that fellow Jolyon, they said.  He’d marry her now, he supposed.

‘My brother Jolyon,’ he thought, ‘what would he have said to it all?’ And somehow the utter impossibility of knowing what his elder brother, once so looked up to, would have said, so worried James that he got up from his chair by the window, and began slowly, feebly to pace the room.

‘She was a pretty thing, too,’ he thought; ’I was fond of her.  Perhaps Soames didn’t suit her—­I don’t know—­I can’t tell.  We never had any trouble with our wives.’  Women had changed everything had changed!  And now the Queen was dead—­well, there it was!  A movement in the crowd brought him to a standstill at the window, his nose touching the pane and whitening from the chill of it.  They had got her as far as Hyde Park Corner—­they were passing now!  Why didn’t Emily come up here where she could see, instead of fussing about lunch.  He missed her at that moment—­missed her!  Through the bare branches of the plane-trees he could just see the procession, could see the hats coming off the people’s heads—­a lot of them would catch colds, he shouldn’t wonder!  A voice behind him said: 

“You’ve got a capital view here, James!”

“There you are!” muttered James; “why didn’t you come before?  You might have missed it!”

And he was silent, staring with all his might.

“What’s the noise?” he asked suddenly.

“There’s no noise,” returned Emily; “what are you thinking of?—­they wouldn’t cheer.”

“I can hear it.”

“Nonsense, James!”

No sound came through those double panes; what James heard was the groaning in his own heart at sight of his Age passing.

“Don’t you ever tell me where I’m buried,” he said suddenly.  “I shan’t want to know.”  And he turned from the window.  There she went, the old Queen; she’d had a lot of anxiety—­she’d be glad to be out of it, he should think!

Emily took up the hair-brushes.

“There’ll be just time to brush your head,” she said, “before they come.  You must look your best, James.”

“Ah!” muttered James; “they say she’s pretty.”

The meeting with his new daughter-in-law took place in the dining-room.  James was seated by the fire when she was brought in.  He placed, his hands on the arms of the chair and slowly raised himself.  Stooping and immaculate in his frock-coat, thin as a line in Euclid, he received Annette’s hand in his; and the anxious eyes of his furrowed face, which had lost its colour now, doubted above her.  A little warmth came into them and into his cheeks, refracted from her bloom.