him--dear Soames, it had been so good of him to come to-day, when they
were not feeling very....!

With compunction tweaking at his chest Soames descended the stairs, where
was always that rather pleasant smell of camphor and port wine, and house
where draughts are not permitted. The poor old things--he had not meant
to be unkind! And in the street he instantly forgot them, repossessed by
the image of Annette and the thought of the cursed coil around him. Why
had he not pushed the thing through and obtained divorce when that
wretched Bosinney was run over, and there was evidence galore for the
asking! And he turned towards his sister Winifred Dartie's residence in
Green Street, Mayfair.

CHAPTER II

EXIT A MAN OF THE WORLD

That a man of the world so subject to the vicissitudes of fortunes as
Montague Dartie should still be living in a house he had inhabited twenty
years at least would have been more noticeable if the rent, rates, taxes,
and repairs of that house had not been defrayed by his father-in-law. By
that simple if wholesale device James Forsyte had secured a certain
stability in the lives of his daughter and his grandchildren. After all,
there is something invaluable about a safe roof over the head of a
sportsman so dashing as Dartie. Until the events of the last few days he
had been almost-supernaturally steady all this year. The fact was he had
acquired a half share in a filly of George Forsyte's, who had gone
irreparably on the turf, to the horror of Roger, now stilled by the
grave. Sleeve-links, by Martyr, out of Shirt-on-fire, by Suspender, was
a bay filly, three years old, who for a variety of reasons had never
shown her true form. With half ownership of this hopeful animal, all the
idealism latent somewhere in Dartie, as in every other man, had put up
its head, and kept him quietly ardent for months past. When a man has
some thing good to live for it is astonishing how sober he becomes; and
what Dartie had was really good--a three to one chance for an autumn
handicap, publicly assessed at twenty-five to one. The old-fashioned
heaven was a poor thing beside it, and his shirt was on the daughter of
Shirt-on-fire. But how much more than his shirt depended on this
granddaughter of Suspender! At that roving age of forty-five, trying to
Forsytes--and, though perhaps less distinguishable from any other age,
trying even to Darties--Montague had fixed his current fancy on a dancer.
It w