ying
something about them, but I didn't need to hear the thing she said to
perceive the relationship of the two. It hit me like a placard on a
hoarding. I was amazed the whole gathering did not see it. Perhaps they
did. She was wearing a remarkably fine diamond necklace, much too fine
for journalism, and regarding him with that quality of questionable
proprietorship, of leashed but straining intimacy, that seems
inseparable from this sort of affair. It is so much more palpable than
matrimony. If anything was wanted to complete my conviction it was
my uncles's eyes when presently he became aware of mine, a certain
embarrassment and a certain pride and defiance. And the next day he made
an opportunity to praise the lady's intelligence to me concisely, lest I
should miss the point of it all.

After that I heard some gossip--from a friend of the lady's. I was
much too curious to do anything but listen. I had never in all my life
imagined my uncle in an amorous attitude. It would appear that she
called him her "God in the Car"--after the hero in a novel of Anthony
Hope's. It was essential to the convention of their relations that he
should go relentlessly whenever business called, and it was generally
arranged that it did call. To him women were an incident, it was
understood between them; Ambition was the master-passion. A great world
called him and the noble hunger for Power. I have never been able to
discover just how honest Mrs. Scrymgeour was in all this, but it is
quite possible the immense glamour of his financial largeness prevailed
with her and that she did bring a really romantic feeling to their
encounters. There must have been some extraordinary moments....

I was a good deal exercised and distressed about my aunt when I realised
what was afoot. I thought it would prove a terrible humiliation to her.
I suspected her of keeping up a brave front with the loss of my uncle's
affections fretting at her heart, but there I simply underestimated her.
She didn't hear for some time and when she did hear she was extremely
angry and energetic. The sentimental situation didn't trouble her for
a moment. She decided that my uncle "wanted smacking." She accentuated
herself with an unexpected new hat, went and gave him an inconceivable
talking-to at the Hardingham, and then came round to "blow-up" me for
not telling her what was going on before....

I tried to bring her to a proper sense of the accepted values in this
affair,