(Mrs.
James) liked a good glass of champagne. It was too dry for Juley, poor
old soul, she had no palate. As to Hatty Chessman! The thought of this
old friend caused a cloud of thought to obscure the perfect glassiness
of his eyes: He shouldn't wonder if she drank half a bottle!

But in thinking of his remaining guest, an expression like that of a
cat who is just going to purr stole over his old face: Mrs. Soames! She
mightn't take much, but she would appreciate what she drank; it was a
pleasure to give her good wine! A pretty woman--and sympathetic to him!

The thought of her was like champagne itself! A pleasure to give a good
wine to a young woman who looked so well, who knew how to dress, with
charming manners, quite distinguished--a pleasure to entertain her.
Between the points of his collar he gave his head the first small,
painful oscillation of the evening.

"Adolf!" he said. "Put in another bottle."

He himself might drink a good deal, for, thanks to that prescription of
Blight's, he found himself extremely well, and he had been careful to
take no lunch. He had not felt so well for weeks. Puffing out his lower
lip, he gave his last instructions:

"Adolf, the least touch of the West India when you come to the ham."

Passing into the anteroom, he sat down on the edge of a chair, with
his knees apart; and his tall, bulky form was wrapped at once in an
expectant, strange, primeval immobility. He was ready to rise at a
moment's notice. He had not given a dinner-party for months. This
dinner in honour of June's engagement had seemed a bore at first (among
Forsytes the custom of solemnizing engagements by feasts was religiously
observed), but the labours of sending invitations and ordering the
repast over, he felt pleasantly stimulated.

And thus sitting, a watch in his hand, fat, and smooth, and golden, like
a flattened globe of butter, he thought of nothing.

A long man, with side whiskers, who had once been in Swithin's service,
but was now a greengrocer, entered and proclaimed:

"Mrs. Chessman, Mrs. Septimus Small!"

Two ladies advanced. The one in front, habited entirely in red, had
large, settled patches of the same colour in her cheeks, and a hard,
dashing eye. She walked at Swithin, holding out a hand cased in a long,
primrose-coloured glove:

"Well! Swithin," she said, "I haven't seen you for ages. How are you?
Why, my dear boy, how stout you're getting!"

The fixity of Swithin's eye alone betra