the stream.' The stream! What
stream? What was this new-fangled way of talking?

He sighed, and folded the last of the papers under the flap of the bag;
he knew well enough what was meant.

June came out of the dining-room, and helped him on with his summer
coat. From her costume, and the expression of her little resolute face,
he saw at once what was coming.

"I'm going with you," she said.

"Nonsense, my dear; I go straight into the City. I can't have you
racketting about!"

"I must see old Mrs. Smeech."

"Oh, your precious 'lame ducks!" grumbled out old Jolyon. He did not
believe her excuse, but ceased his opposition. There was no doing
anything with that pertinacity of hers.

At Victoria he put her into the carriage which had been ordered for
himself--a characteristic action, for he had no petty selfishnesses.

"Now, don't you go tiring yourself, my darling," he said, and took a cab
on into the city.

June went first to a back-street in Paddington, where Mrs. Smeech,
her 'lame duck,' lived--an aged person, connected with the charring
interest; but after half an hour spent in hearing her habitually
lamentable recital, and dragooning her into temporary comfort, she went
on to Stanhope Gate. The great house was closed and dark.

She had decided to learn something at all costs. It was better to face
the worst, and have it over. And this was her plan: To go first to
Phil's aunt, Mrs. Baynes, and, failing information there, to Irene
herself. She had no clear notion of what she would gain by these visits.

At three o'clock she was in Lowndes Square. With a woman's instinct when
trouble is to be faced, she had put on her best frock, and went to the
battle with a glance as courageous as old Jolyon's itself. Her tremors
had passed into eagerness.

Mrs. Baynes, Bosinney's aunt (Louisa was her name), was in her kitchen
when June was announced, organizing the cook, for she was an excellent
housewife, and, as Baynes always said, there was 'a lot in a good
dinner.' He did his best work after dinner. It was Baynes who built that
remarkably fine row of tall crimson houses in Kensington which compete
with so many others for the title of 'the ugliest in London.'

On hearing June's name, she went hurriedly to her bedroom, and, taking
two large bracelets from a red morocco case in a locked drawer, put
them on her white wrists--for she possessed in a remarkable degree that
'sense of property,' which, as we know, is the t