ving the mood which the war had left,
seated--dark, heavy, smiling, indifferent--in your Empire chair; it was
like listening to that mood talking through thick pink lips above a
little diabolic beard. It was, as Jack Cardigan expressed it--for the
English character at large--"a bit too thick"--for if nothing was
really worth getting excited about, there were always games, and one
could make it so! Even Winifred, ever a Forsyte at heart, felt that
there was nothing to be had out of a mood of disillusionment; it really
ought not to be there. Monsieur Profond, in fact, made the mood too
plain, in a country which decently veiled such realities.

When Fleur, after her hurried return from Robin Hill, came down to
dinner that evening, the mood was standing at the window of Winifred's
little drawing-room, looking out into Green Street, with an air of
seeing nothing in it. And Fleur gazed promptly into the fireplace with
an air of seeing a fire which was not there.

Monsieur Profond came from the window. He was in full fig, with a white
waistcoat and a white flower in his buttonhole.

"Well, Miss Forsyde," he said, "I'm awful pleased to see you. Mr.
Forsyde well? I was sayin' to-day I want to see him have some pleasure.
He worries."

"You think so?" said Fleur shortly.

"Worries," repeated Monsieur Profond, burring the r's.

Fleur spun round. "Shall I tell you," she said, "what would give him
pleasure?" But the words: "To hear that you had cleared out" died at
the expression on his face. All his fine white teeth were showing.

"I was hearin' at the Club to-day, about his old trouble."

"What do you mean?"

Monsieur Profond moved his sleek head as if to minimise his statement.

"Before you were born," he said; "that small business."

Though conscious that he had cleverly diverted her from his own share
in her father's worry, Fleur could not withstand a rush of nervous
curiosity. "What did you hear?"

"Why!" murmured Monsieur Profond, "you know all that."

"I expect I do. But I should like to know that you haven't heard it all
wrong."

"His first wife," murmured Monsieur Profond.

Choking back the words: "He was never married before"; she said: "Well,
what about her?"

"Mr. George Forsyde was tellin' me about your father's first wife
marryin' his cousin Jolyon afterwards. It was a small bit unpleasant, I
should think. I saw their boy--nice boy!"

Fleur looked up. Monsieur Profond was swimming, heavily diabolic