was better away from her
mother in her war mood, from the chance of air-raids, and the impetus to
do extravagant things; so he had placed her in a seminary as far West
as had seemed to him compatible with excellence, and had missed her
horribly. Fleur! He had never regretted the somewhat outlandish name
by which at her birth he had decided so suddenly to call her--marked
concession though it had been to the French. Fleur! A pretty name--a
pretty child! But restless--too restless; and wilful! Knowing her power
too over her father! Soames often reflected on the mistake it was to
dote on his daughter. To get old and dote! Sixty-five! He was getting
on; but he didn't feel it, for, fortunately perhaps, considering
Annette's youth and good looks, his second marriage had turned out a
cool affair. He had known but one real passion in his life--for that
first wife of his--Irene. Yes, and that fellow, his cousin Jolyon, who
had gone off with her, was looking very shaky, they said. No wonder, at
seventy-two, after twenty years of a third marriage!

Soames paused a moment in his march to lean over the railings of the
Row. A suitable spot for reminiscence, half-way between that house in
Park Lane which had seen his birth and his parents' deaths, and the
little house in Montpellier Square where thirty-five years ago he had
enjoyed his first edition of matrimony. Now, after twenty years of
his second edition, that old tragedy seemed to him like a previous
existence--which had ended when Fleur was born in place of the son he
had hoped for. For many years he had ceased regretting, even vaguely,
the son who had not been born; Fleur filled the bill in his heart. After
all, she bore his name; and he was not looking forward at all to the
time when she would change it. Indeed, if he ever thought of such a
calamity, it was seasoned by the vague feeling that he could make her
rich enough to purchase perhaps and extinguish the name of the fellow
who married her--why not, since, as it seemed, women were equal to men
nowadays? And Soames, secretly convinced that they were not, passed his
curved hand over his face vigorously, till it reached the comfort of his
chin. Thanks to abstemious habits, he had not grown fat and gabby; his
nose was pale and thin, his grey moustache close-clipped, his eyesight
unimpaired. A slight stoop closened and corrected the expansion given to
his face by the heightening of his forehead in the recession of his
grey hai