interest in fifteen thousand pounds. He had called on her to explain
that the existing investment in India Stock, ear-marked to meet the
charge, would produce for her the interesting net sum of L430 odd a
year, clear of income tax. This was but the third time he had seen his
cousin Soames' wife--if indeed she was still his wife, of which he was
not quite sure. He remembered having seen her sitting in the Botanical
Gardens waiting for Bosinney--a passive, fascinating figure, reminding
him of Titian's 'Heavenly Love,' and again, when, charged by his father,
he had gone to Montpellier Square on the afternoon when Bosinney's
death was known. He still recalled vividly her sudden appearance in the
drawing-room doorway on that occasion--her beautiful face, passing from
wild eagerness of hope to stony despair; remembered the compassion he
had felt, Soames' snarling smile, his words, "We are not at home!" and
the slam of the front door.

This third time he saw a face and form more beautiful--freed from that
warp of wild hope and despair. Looking at her, he thought: 'Yes, you
are just what the Dad would have admired!' And the strange story of
his father's Indian summer became slowly clear to him. She spoke of old
Jolyon with reverence and tears in her eyes. "He was so wonderfully kind
to me; I don't know why. He looked so beautiful and peaceful sitting in
that chair under the tree; it was I who first came on him sitting
there, you know. Such a lovely day. I don't think an end could have been
happier. We should all like to go out like that."

'Quite right!' he had thought. 'We should all a like to go out in full
summer with beauty stepping towards us across a lawn.' And looking round
the little, almost empty drawing-room, he had asked her what she was
going to do now. "I am going to live again a little, Cousin Jolyon. It's
wonderful to have money of one's own. I've never had any. I shall keep
this flat, I think; I'm used to it; but I shall be able to go to Italy."

"Exactly!" Jolyon had murmured, looking at her faintly smiling lips; and
he had gone away thinking: 'A fascinating woman! What a waste! I'm
glad the Dad left her that money.' He had not seen her again, but every
quarter he had signed her cheque, forwarding it to her bank, with a
note to the Chelsea flat to say that he had done so; and always he
had received a note in acknowledgment, generally from the flat, but
sometimes from Italy; so that her personality had become