I don’t wish to write harshly of Soames Forsyte.  I don’t think harshly of him.  I have long been sorry for him; perhaps I was sorry even then.  As the world judges she was in error, he within his rights.  He loved her—­in his way.  She was his property.  That is the view he holds of life—­of human feelings and hearts—­property.  It’s not his fault—­so was he born.  To me it is a view that has always been abhorrent—­so was I born!  Knowing you as I do, I feel it cannot be otherwise than abhorrent to you.  Let me go on with the story.  Your mother fled from his house that night; for twelve years she lived quietly alone without companionship of any sort, until in 1899 her husband—­you see, he was still her husband, for he did not attempt to divorce her, and she of course had no right to divorce him—­became conscious, it seems, of the want of children, and commenced a long attempt to induce her to go back to him and give him a child.  I was her trustee then, under your Grandfather’s Will, and I watched this going on.  While watching, I became attached to her, devotedly attached.  His pressure increased, till one day she came to me here and practically put herself under my protection.  Her husband, who was kept informed of all her movements, attempted to force us apart by bringing a divorce suit, or possibly he really meant it, I don’t know; but anyway our names were publicly joined.  That decided us, and we became united in fact.  She was divorced, married me, and you were born.  We have lived in perfect happiness, at least I have, and I believe your mother also.  Soames, soon after the divorce, married Fleur’s mother, and she was born.  That is the story, Jon.  I have told it you, because by the affection which we see you have formed for this man’s daughter you are blindly moving toward what must utterly destroy your mother’s happiness, if not your own.  I don’t wish to speak of myself, because at my age there’s no use supposing I shall cumber the ground much longer, besides, what I should suffer would be mainly on her account, and on yours.  But what I want you to realise is that feelings of horror and aversion such as those can never be buried or forgotten.  They are alive in her to-day.  Only yesterday at Lord’s we happened to see Soames Forsyte.  Her face, if you had seen it, would have convinced you.  The idea that you should marry his daughter is a nightmare to her, Jon.  I have nothing to say against Fleur save that she is his daughter.  But your children, if you married her, would be the grandchildren of Soames, as much as of your mother, of a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave.  Think what that would mean.  By such a marriage you enter the camp which held your mother prisoner and wherein she ate her heart out.  You are just on the threshold of life, you have only known this girl two months, and however deeply you think you love her, I appeal to you to break it off at once.  Don’t give your mother this rankling