ful period twenty years back when he had divorced
Irene, Soames had found himself almost insensibly retaining control of
all purely Forsyte affairs.

Hesitating for just a moment, he nodded and went in. Since the death of
his brother-in-law Montague Dartie, in Paris, which no one had quite
known what to make of, except that it was certainly not suicide--the
Iseeum Club had seemed more respectable to Soames. George, too, he knew,
had sown the last of his wild oats, and was committed definitely to the
joys of the table, eating only of the very best so as to keep his weight
down, and owning, as he said, "just one or two old screws to give me an
interest in life." He joined his cousin, therefore, in the bay window
without the embarrassing sense of indiscretion he had been used to feel
up there. George put out a well-kept hand.

"Haven't seen you since the War," he said. "How's your wife?"

"Thanks," said Soames coldly, "well enough."

Some hidden jest curved, for a moment, George's fleshy face, and gloated
from his eye.

"That Belgian chap, Profond," he said, "is a member here now. He's a rum
customer."

"Quite!" muttered Soames. "What did you want to see me about?"

"Old Timothy; he might go off the hooks at any moment. I suppose he's
made his Will."

"Yes."

"Well, you or somebody ought to give him a look up--last of the old lot;
he's a hundred, you know. They say he's like a rummy. Where are you
goin' to put him? He ought to have a pyramid by rights."

Soames shook his head. "Highgate, the family vault."

"Well, I suppose the old girls would miss him, if he was anywhere else.
They say he still takes an interest in food. He might last on, you know.
Don't we get anything for the old Forsytes? Ten of them--average age
eighty-eight--I worked it out. That ought to be equal to triplets."

"Is that all?" said Soames, "I must be getting on."

'You unsociable devil,' George's eyes seemed to answer. "Yes, that's
all: Look him up in his mausoleum--the old chap might want to prophesy."
The grin died on the rich curves of his face, and he added: "Haven't you
attorneys invented a way yet of dodging this damned income tax? It hits
the fixed inherited income like the very deuce. I used to have two
thousand five hundred a year; now I've got a beggarly fifteen hundred,
and the price of living doubled."

"Ah!" murmured Soames, "the turf's in danger."

Over George's face moved a gleam of sardonic self-defe