Blasted Cement Co., Ltd.,' as that the point had lately begun to seem to
him, too, a nice one; there was about it just that pleasant flavour
of subtlety so attractive to the best legal appetites. To have his own
impression confirmed by Waterbuck, Q.C., would have disturbed any man.

He sat thinking it over, and staring at the empty grate, for though
autumn had come, the weather kept as gloriously fine that jubilee year
as if it were still high August. It was not pleasant to be disturbed; he
desired too passionately to set his foot on Bosinney's neck.

Though he had not seen the architect since the last afternoon at Robin
Hill, he was never free from the sense of his presence--never free from
the memory of his worn face with its high cheek bones and enthusiastic
eyes. It would not be too much to say that he had never got rid of
the feeling of that night when he heard the peacock's cry at dawn--the
feeling that Bosinney haunted the house. And every man's shape that he
saw in the dark evenings walking past, seemed that of him whom George
had so appropriately named the Buccaneer.

Irene still met him, he was certain; where, or how, he neither knew, nor
asked; deterred by a vague and secret dread of too much knowledge. It
all seemed subterranean nowadays.

Sometimes when he questioned his wife as to where she had been, which
he still made a point of doing, as every Forsyte should, she looked very
strange. Her self-possession was wonderful, but there were moments when,
behind the mask of her face, inscrutable as it had always been to him,
lurked an expression he had never been used to see there.

She had taken to lunching out too; when he asked Bilson if her mistress
had been in to lunch, as often as not she would answer: "No, sir."

He strongly disapproved of her gadding about by herself, and told her
so. But she took no notice. There was something that angered, amazed,
yet almost amused him about the calm way in which she disregarded his
wishes. It was really as if she were hugging to herself the thought of a
triumph over him.

He rose from the perusal of Waterbuck, Q.C.'s opinion, and, going
upstairs, entered her room, for she did not lock her doors till
bed-time--she had the decency, he found, to save the feelings of the
servants. She was brushing her hair, and turned to him with strange
fierceness.

"What do you want?" she said. "Please leave my room!"

He answered: "I want to know how long this state of things