you fit for nothing."

He was invisible now behind his paper, which he turned with a vicious
crackle; but when June came up to kiss him, he said: "Good-night, my
darling," in a tone so tremulous and unexpected, that it was all the
girl could do to get out of the room without breaking into the fit of
sobbing which lasted her well on into the night.

When the door was closed, old Jolyon dropped his paper, and stared long
and anxiously in front of him.

'The beggar!' he thought. 'I always knew she'd have trouble with him!'

Uneasy doubts and suspicions, the more poignant that he felt himself
powerless to check or control the march of events, came crowding upon
him.

Was the fellow going to jilt her? He longed to go and say to him: "Look
here, you sir! Are you going to jilt my grand-daughter?" But how could
he? Knowing little or nothing, he was yet certain, with his unerring
astuteness, that there was something going on. He suspected Bosinney of
being too much at Montpellier Square.

'This fellow,' he thought, 'may not be a scamp; his face is not a bad
one, but he's a queer fish. I don't know what to make of him. I shall
never know what to make of him! They tell me he works like a nigger, but
I see no good coming of it. He's unpractical, he has no method. When he
comes here, he sits as glum as a monkey. If I ask him what wine he'll
have, he says: "Thanks, any wine." If I offer him a cigar, he smokes it
as if it were a twopenny German thing. I never see him looking at June
as he ought to look at her; and yet, he's not after her money. If
she were to make a sign, he'd be off his bargain to-morrow. But she
won't--not she! She'll stick to him! She's as obstinate as fate--She'll
never let go!'

Sighing deeply, he turned the paper; in its columns, perchance he might
find consolation.

And upstairs in her room June sat at her open window, where the spring
wind came, after its revel across the Park, to cool her hot cheeks and
burn her heart.

CHAPTER III--DRIVE WITH SWITHIN

Two lines of a certain song in a certain famous old school's songbook
run as follows:

'How the buttons on his blue frock shone, tra-la-la! How he carolled and
he sang, like a bird!...'

Swithin did not exactly carol and sing like a bird, but he felt
almost like endeavouring to hum a tune, as he stepped out of Hyde Park
Mansions, and contemplated his horses drawn up before the door.

The afternoon was as balmy as a day in June, and to com