old face was
spread for a moment with a strange contentment; then broke into pouts,
and tears came into her eyes. She was thinking of that long ago driving
tour she had once taken with Septimus Small.

James, who had relapsed into his nervous brooding in the little chair,
suddenly roused himself: "He's a funny fellow, Swithin," he said, but in
a half-hearted way.

Old Jolyon's silence, his stern eyes, held them all in a kind of
paralysis. He was disconcerted himself by the effect of his own
words--an effect which seemed to deepen the importance of the very
rumour he had come to scotch; but he was still angry.

He had not done with them yet--No, no--he would give them another rub or
two.

He did not wish to rub his nieces, he had no quarrel with them--a young
and presentable female always appealed to old Jolyon's clemency--but
that fellow James, and, in a less degree perhaps, those others, deserved
all they would get. And he, too, asked for Timothy.

As though feeling that some danger threatened her younger brother, Aunt
Juley suddenly offered him tea: "There it is," she said, "all cold and
nasty, waiting for you in the back drawing room, but Smither shall make
you some fresh."

Old Jolyon rose: "Thank you," he said, looking straight at James, "but
I've no time for tea, and--scandal, and the rest of it! It's time I was
at home. Good-bye, Julia; good-bye, Hester; good-bye, Winifred."

Without more ceremonious adieux, he marched out.

Once again in his cab, his anger evaporated, for so it ever was with
his wrath--when he had rapped out, it was gone. Sadness came over his
spirit. He had stopped their mouths, maybe, but at what a cost! At the
cost of certain knowledge that the rumour he had been resolved not to
believe was true. June was abandoned, and for the wife of that fellow's
son! He felt it was true, and hardened himself to treat it as if it were
not; but the pain he hid beneath this resolution began slowly, surely,
to vent itself in a blind resentment against James and his son.

The six women and one man left behind in the little drawing-room began
talking as easily as might be after such an occurrence, for though each
one of them knew for a fact that he or she never talked scandal, each
one of them also knew that the other six did; all were therefore angry
and at a loss. James only was silent, disturbed, to the bottom of his
soul.

Presently Francie said: "Do you know, I think Uncle Jolyon is terribly
c