earance 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 embodied in slightly
scented grey paper, an upright fine handwriting, and the words, 'Dear
Cousin Jolyon.' Man of property that he now was, the slender cheque he
signed often gave rise to the thought: 'Well, I suppose she just
manages'; sliding into a vague wonder how she was faring otherwise in a
world of men not wont to let beauty go unpossessed. At first Holly had
spoken of her sometimes, but 'ladies in grey' soon fade from children's
memories; and the tightening of June's lips in those first weeks after
her grandfather's death whenever her former friend's name was mentioned,
had discouraged allusion. Only once, indeed, had June spoken definitely:
"I've forgi