.

Winifred Dartie at sixty-two was marvellously preserved, considering the
three-and-thirty years during which she had put up with Montague Dartie,
till almost happily released by a French staircase. It was to her a
vehement satisfaction to have her favourite son back from South Africa
after all this time, to feel him so little changed, and to have taken
a fancy to his wife. Winifred, who in the late seventies, before her
marriage, had been in the vanguard of freedom, pleasure, and fashion,
confessed her youth outclassed by the donzellas of the day. They seemed,
for instance, to regard marriage as an incident, and Winifred sometimes
regretted that she had not done the same; a second, third, fourth
incident might have secured her a partner of less dazzling inebriety;
though, after all, he had left her Val, Imogen, Maud, Benedict (almost a
colonel and unharmed by the War)--none of whom had been divorced as yet.
The steadiness of her children often amazed one who remembered their
father; but, as she was fond of believing, they were really all
Forsytes, favouring herself, with the exception, perhaps, of Imogen. Her
brother's "little girl" Fleur frankly puzzled Winifred. The child was as
restless as any of these modern young women--"She's a small flame in a
draught," Prosper Profond had said one day after dinner--but she did
not flop, or talk at the top of her voice. The steady Forsyteism in
Winifred's own character instinctively resented the feeling in the
air, the modern girl's habits and her motto: "All's much of a muchness!
Spend, to-morrow we shall be poor!" She found it a saving grace in Fleur
that, having set her heart on a thing, she had no change of heart until
she got it--though--what happened after, Fleur was, of course, too young
to have made evident. The child was a "very pretty little thing," too,
and quite a credit to take about, with her mother's French taste and
gift for wearing clothes; everybody turned to look at Fleur--great
consideration to Winifred, a lover of the style and distinction which
had so cruelly deceived her in the case of Montague Dartie.

In discussing her with Val, at breakfast on Saturday morning, Winifred
dwelt on the family skeleton.

"That little affair of your father-in-law and your Aunt Irene, Val--it's
old as the hills, of course, Fleur need know nothing about it--making
a fuss. Your Uncle Soames is very particular about that. So you'll be
careful."

"Yes! But it's dashed awkwa