stopper on it. Let her do needlework for them at home, or knit! She had
not gone, therefore, and had never been quite the same woman since. A
bad tendency of hers to mock at him, not openly, but in continual little
ways, had grown. As for Fleur, the War had resolved the vexed problem
whether or not she should go to school. 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