She was better away from her mother in her
war mood, from the chance of air-raids, and the impetus to do extravagant
things; so he had placed her in a seminary as far West as had seemed to
him compatible with excellence, and had missed her horribly. Fleur! He
had never regretted the somewhat outlandish name by which at her birth he
had decided so suddenly to call her--marked concession though it had been
to the French. Fleur! A pretty name--a pretty child! But restless--too
restless; and wilful! Knowing her power too over her father! Soames
often reflected on the mistake it was to dote on his daughter. To get
old and dote! Sixty-five! He was getting on; but he didn't feel it,
for, fortunately perhaps, considering Annette's youth and good looks, his
second marriage had turned out a cool affair. He had known but one real
passion in his life--for that first wife of his--Irene. Yes, and that
fellow, his cousin Jolyon, who had gone off with her, was looking very
shaky, they said. No wonder, at seventy-two, after twenty years of a
third marriage!

Soames paused a moment in his march to lean over the railings of the Row.
A suitable spot for reminiscence, half-way between that house in Park
Lane which had seen his birth and his parents' deaths, and the little
house in Montpellier Square where thirty-five years ago he had enjoyed
his first edition of matrimony. Now, after twenty years of his second
edition, that old tragedy seemed to him like a previous existence--which
had ended when Fleur was born in place of the son he had hoped for. For
many years he had ceased regretting, even vaguely, the son who had not
been born; Fleur filled the bill in his heart. After all, she bore his
name; and he was not looking forward at all to the time when she would
change it. Indeed, if he ever thought of such a calamity, it was
seasoned by the vague feeling that he could make her rich enough to
purchase perhaps and extinguish the name of the fellow who married
her--why not, since, as it seemed, women were equal to men nowadays? And
Soames, secretly convinced that they were not, passed his curved hand
over his face vigorously, till it reached the comfort of his chin.
Thanks to abstemious habits, he had not grown fat and gabby; his nose was
pale and thin, his grey moustache close-clipped, his eyesight unimpaired.
A slight stoop closened and corrected the expansion given to his face by
the heightening of his forehead in the reces