buy a picture," he said at last.

"I don't think so. Perhaps it was just family affection."

"She's only a first cousin once removed," muttered Soames.

"And the daughter of your enemy."

"What d'you mean by that?"

"I beg your pardon, dear; I thought he was."

"Enemy!" repeated Soames. "It's ancient history. I don't know where you
get your notions."

"From June Forsyte."

It had come to her as an inspiration that if he thought she knew, or
were on the edge of knowledge, he would tell her.

Soames was startled, but she had underrated his caution and tenacity.

"If you know," he said coldly, "why do you plague me?"

Fleur saw that she had overreached herself.

"I don't want to plague you, darling. As you say, why want to know
more? Why want to know anything of that 'small' mystery--Je m'en fiche,
as Profond says."

"That chap!" said Soames profoundly.

That chap, indeed, played a considerable, if invisible, part this
summer--for he had not turned up again. Ever since the Sunday when
Fleur had drawn attention to him prowling on the lawn, Soames had
thought of him a good deal, and always in connection with Annette, for
no reason, except that she was looking handsomer than for some time
past. His possessive instinct, subtler, less formal, more elastic since
the war, kept all misgiving underground. As one looks on some American
river, quiet and pleasant, knowing that an alligator perhaps is lying
in the mud with his snout just raised and indistinguishable from a snag
of wood--so Soames looked on the river of his own existence,
subconscious of Monsieur Profond, refusing to see more than the
suspicion of his snout. He had at this epoch in his life practically
all he wanted, and was as nearly happy as his nature would permit. His
senses were at rest; his affections found all the vent they needed in
his daughter; his collection was well known, his money well invested;
his health excellent, save for a touch of liver now and again; he had
not yet begun to worry seriously about what would happen after death,
inclining to think that nothing would happen. He resembled one of his
own gilt-edged securities, and to knock the gilt off by seeing anything
he could avoid seeing, would be, he felt instinctively, perverse and
retrogressive. Those two crumpled rose-leaves, Fleur's caprice and
Monsieur Profond's snout, would level away if he lay on them
industriously.

That evening Chance, which visits the lives of even the b