roval; for this
additional proof that her life was to be passed amongst 'lame ducks'
worried him. Would she never make a friendship or take an interest in
something that would be of real benefit to her?

'Taking up with a parcel of foreigners,' he called it. He often,
however, brought home grapes or roses, and presented them to 'Mam'zelle'
with an ingratiating twinkle.

Towards the end of September, in spite of June's disapproval,
Mademoiselle Vigor breathed her last in the little hotel at St. Luc, to
which they had moved her; and June took her defeat so deeply to heart
that old Jolyon carried her away to Paris. Here, in contemplation of the
'Venus de Milo' and the 'Madeleine,' she shook off her depression, and
when, towards the middle of October, they returned to town, her
grandfather believed that he had effected a cure.

No sooner, however, had they established themselves in Stanhope Gate than
he perceived to his dismay a return of her old absorbed and brooding
manner. She would sit, staring in front of her, her chin on her hand,
like a little Norse spirit, grim and intent, while all around in the
electric light, then just installed, shone the great, drawing-room
brocaded up to the frieze, full of furniture from Baple and Pullbred's.
And in the huge gilt mirror were reflected those Dresden china groups of
young men in tight knee breeches, at the feet of full-bosomed ladies
nursing on their laps pet lambs, which old Jolyon had bought when he was
a bachelor and thought so highly of in these days of degenerate taste.
He was a man of most open mind, who, more than any Forsyte of them all,
had moved with the times, but he could never forget that he had bought
these groups at Jobson's, and given a lot of money for them. He often
said to June, with a sort of disillusioned contempt:

"You don't care about them! They're not the gimcrack things you and your
friends like, but they cost me seventy pounds!" He was not a man who
allowed his taste to be warped when he knew for solid reasons that it was
sound.

One of the first things that June did on getting home was to go round to
Timothy's. She persuaded herself that it was her duty to call there, and
cheer him with an account of all her travels; but in reality she went
because she knew of no other place where, by some random speech, or
roundabout question, she could glean news of Bosinney.

They received her most cordially: And how was her dear grandfather? He
h