he could not foresee. And the fantastic thought suddenly assailed him if
instead of, 'I think you had better go,' she had said, 'I think you had
better stay!' What should he have felt, what would he have done? That
cursed attraction of her was there for him even now, after all these
years of estrangement and bitter thoughts. It was there, ready to mount
to his head at a sign, a touch. 'I was a fool to go!' he muttered. 'I've
advanced nothing. Who could imagine? I never thought!' Memory, flown
back to the first years of his marriage, played him torturing tricks.
She had not deserved to keep her beauty--the beauty he had owned and
known so well. And a kind of bitterness at the tenacity of his own
admiration welled up in him. Most men would have hated the sight of
her, as she had deserved. She had spoiled his life, wounded his pride to
death, defrauded him of a son. And yet the mere sight of her, cold and
resisting as ever, had this power to upset him utterly! It was some
damned magnetism she had! And no wonder if, as she asserted; she had
lived untouched these last twelve years. So Bosinney--cursed be his
memory!--had lived on all this time with her! Soames could not tell
whether he was glad of that knowledge or no.

Nearing his Club at last he stopped to buy a paper. A headline ran:
'Boers reported to repudiate suzerainty!' Suzerainty! 'Just like her!'
he thought: 'she always did. Suzerainty! I still have it by rights. She
must be awfully lonely in that wretched little flat!'

CHAPTER XII--ON FORSYTE 'CHANGE

Soames belonged to two clubs, 'The Connoisseurs,' which he put on his
cards and seldom visited, and 'The Remove,' which he did not put on his
cards and frequented. He had joined this Liberal institution five
years ago, having made sure that its members were now nearly all sound
Conservatives in heart and pocket, if not in principle. Uncle Nicholas
had put him up. The fine reading-room was decorated in the Adam style.

On entering that evening he glanced at the tape for any news about the
Transvaal, and noted that Consols were down seven-sixteenths since
the morning. He was turning away to seek the reading-room when a voice
behind him said:

"Well, Soames, that went off all right."

It was Uncle Nicholas, in a frock-coat and his special cut-away collar,
with a black tie passed through a ring. Heavens! How young and dapper he
looked at eighty-two!

"I think Roger'd have been pleased," his uncle went on.