d taste was confirmed when
the girl got up, saying, "You wish to see Maman, Monsieur?" in a broken
accent.

"Yes," Soames had answered, "I represent your landlord; in fact, I'm his
son."

"Won't you sit down, sir, please? Tell Maman to come to this gentleman."

He was pleased that the girl seemed impressed, because it showed
business instinct; and suddenly he noticed that she was remarkably
pretty--so remarkably pretty that his eyes found a difficulty in leaving
her face. When she moved to put a chair for him, she swayed in a curious
subtle way, as if she had been put together by someone with a special
secret skill; and her face and neck, which was a little bared, looked
as fresh as if they had been sprayed with dew. Probably at this moment
Soames decided that the lease had not been violated; though to himself
and his father he based the decision on the efficiency of those illicit
adaptations in the building, on the signs of prosperity, and the obvious
business capacity of Madame Lamotte. He did not, however, neglect to
leave certain matters to future consideration, which had necessitated
further visits, so that the little back room had become quite accustomed
to his spare, not unsolid, but unobtrusive figure, and his pale, chinny
face with clipped moustache and dark hair not yet grizzling at the
sides.

"Un Monsieur tres distingue," Madame Lamotte found him; and presently,
"Tres amical, tres gentil," watching his eyes upon her daughter.

She was one of those generously built, fine-faced, dark-haired
Frenchwomen, whose every action and tone of voice inspire perfect
confidence in the thoroughness of their domestic tastes, their knowledge
of cooking, and the careful increase of their bank balances.

After those visits to the Restaurant Bretagne began, other visits
ceased--without, indeed, any definite decision, for Soames, like
all Forsytes, and the great majority of their countrymen, was a born
empiricist. But it was this change in his mode of life which had
gradually made him so definitely conscious that he desired to alter his
condition from that of the unmarried married man to that of the married
man remarried.

Turning into Malta Street on this evening of early October, 1899, he
bought a paper to see if there were any after-development of the Dreyfus
case--a question which he had always found useful in making closer
acquaintanceship with Madame Lamotte and her daughter, who were Catholic
and anti-Dreyfusard.