And suddenly Soames became conscious of feeling weak, and hot, and shaky.  Sheer nerves at the meeting before him!  As Aunt Juley might have said—­quoting “Superior Dosset”—­his nerves were “in a proper fautigue.”  He could see the house now among its trees, the house he had watched being built, intending it for himself and this woman, who, by such strange fate, had lived in it with another after all!  He began to think of Dumetrius, Local Loans, and other forms of investment.  He could not afford to meet her with his nerves all shaking; he who represented the Day of Judgment for her on earth as it was in heaven; he, legal ownership, personified, meeting lawless beauty, incarnate.  His dignity demanded impassivity during this embassy designed to link their offspring, who, if she had behaved herself, would have been brother and sister.  That wretched tune, “The Wild, Wild Women,” kept running in his head, perversely, for tunes did not run there as a rule.  Passing the poplars in front of the house, he thought:  ‘How they’ve grown; I had them planted!’ A maid answered his ring.

“Will you say—­Mr. Forsyte, on a very special matter.”

If she realised who he was, quite probably she would not see him.  ’By George!’ he thought, hardening as the tug came.  ’It’s a topsy-turvy affair!’

The maid came back.  “Would the gentleman state his business, please?”

“Say it concerns Mr. Jon,” said Soames.

And once more he was alone in that hall with the pool of grey-white marble designed by her first lover.  Ah! she had been a bad lot—­had loved two men, and not himself!  He must remember that when he came face to face with her once more.  And suddenly he saw her in the opening chink between the long heavy purple curtains, swaying, as if in hesitation; the old perfect poise and line, the old startled dark-eyed gravity, the old calm defensive voice:  “Will you come in, please?”

He passed through that opening.  As in the picture-gallery and the confectioner’s shop, she seemed to him still beautiful.  And this was the first time—­the very first—­since he married her seven-and-thirty years ago, that he was speaking to her without the legal right to call her his.  She was not wearing black—­one of that fellow’s radical notions, he supposed.

“I apologise for coming,” he said glumly; “but this business must be settled one way or the other.”

“Won’t you sit down?”

“No, thank you.”

Anger at his false position, impatience of ceremony between them, mastered him, and words came tumbling out: 

“It’s an infernal mischance; I’ve done my best to discourage it.  I consider my daughter crazy, but I’ve got into the habit of indulging her; that’s why I’m here.  I suppose you’re fond of your son.”

“Devotedly.”

“Well?”

“It rests with him.”

He had a sense of being met and baffled.  Always—­always she had baffled him, even in those old first married days.