it much as he used to regard his brother-in-law, Montague Dartie.  The thing typified all that was fast, insecure, and subcutaneously oily in modern life.  As modern life became faster, looser, younger, Soames was becoming older, slower, tighter, more and more in thought and language like his father James before him.  He was almost aware of it himself.  Pace and progress pleased him less and less; there was an ostentation, too, about a car which he considered provocative in the prevailing mood of Labour.  On one occasion that fellow Sims had driven over the only vested interest of a working man.  Soames had not forgotten the behaviour of its master, when not many people would have stopped to put up with it.  He had been sorry for the dog, and quite prepared to take its part against the car, if that ruffian hadn’t been so outrageous.  With four hours fast becoming five, and still no Fleur, all the old car-wise feelings he had experienced in person and by proxy balled within him, and sinking sensations troubled the pit of his stomach.  At seven he telephoned to Winifred by trunk call.  No!  Fleur had not been to Green Street.  Then where was she?  Visions of his beloved daughter rolled up in her pretty frills, all blood and dust-stained, in some hideous catastrophe, began to haunt him.  He went to her room and spied among her things.  She had taken nothing—­no dressing-case, no Jewellery.  And this, a relief in one sense, increased his fears of an accident.  Terrible to be helpless when his loved one was missing, especially when he couldn’t bear fuss or publicity of any kind!  What should he do if she were not back by nightfall?

At a quarter to eight he heard the car.  A great weight lifted from off his heart; he hurried down.  She was getting out—­pale and tired-looking, but nothing wrong.  He met her in the hall.

“You’ve frightened me.  Where have you been?”

“To Robin Hill.  I’m sorry, dear.  I had to go; I’ll tell you afterward.”  And, with a flying kiss, she ran up-stairs.

Soames waited in the drawing-room.  To Robin Hill!  What did that portend?

It was not a subject they could discuss at dinner—­consecrated to the susceptibilities of the butler.  The agony of nerves Soames had been through, the relief he felt at her safety, softened his power to condemn what she had done, or resist what she was going to do; he waited in a relaxed stupor for her revelation.  Life was a queer business.  There he was at sixty-five and no more in command of things than if he had not spent forty years in building up security-always something one couldn’t get on terms with!  In the pocket of his dinner-jacket was a letter from Annette.  She was coming back in a fortnight.  He knew nothing of what she had been doing out there.  And he was glad that he did not.  Her absence had been a relief.  Out of sight was out of mind!  And now she was coming back.  Another worry!  And the Bolderby Old Crome was gone—­Dumetrius