The engaged couple thus scrutinized were unconscious of this passive goddess. It was Bosinney who first noticed her, andasked her name.

June took her lover up to the woman with the beautiful figure.

“Irene is my greatest chum,” she said: “Please be good friends, you two!”

At the little lady’s command they all three smiled; and while they were smiling, Soames Forsyte, silently appearing frombehind the woman with the beautiful figure, who was his wife, said:

“Ah! introduce me too!”

He was seldom, indeed, far from Irene’s side at public functions, and even when separated by the exigencies of socialintercourse, could be seen following her about with his eyes, in which were strange expressions of watchfulness andlonging.

At the window his father, James, was still scrutinizing the marks on the piece of china.

“I wonder at Jolyon’s allowing this engagement,” he said to Aunt Ann. “They tell me there’s no chance of their gettingmarried for years. This young Bosinney” (he made the word a dactyl in opposition to general usage of a short o) “has gotnothing. When Winifred married Dartie, I made him bring every penny into settlement — lucky thing, too — they’d ha’ hadnothing by this time!”

Aunt Ann looked up from her velvet chair. Grey curls banded her forehead, curls that, unchanged for decades, hadextinguished in the family all sense of time. She made no reply, for she rarely spoke, husbanding her aged voice; but toJames, uneasy of conscience, her look was as good as an answer.

“Well,” he said, “I couldn’t help Irene’s having no money. Soames was in such a hurry; he got quite thin dancingattendance on her.”

Putting the bowl pettishly down on the piano, he let his eyes wander to the group by the door.

“It’s my opinion,” he said unexpectedly, “that it’s just as well as it is.”

Aunt Ann did not ask him to explain this strange utterance. She knew what he was thinking. If Irene had no money shewould not be so foolish as to do anything wrong; for they said — they said — she had been asking for a separate room; but,of course, Soames had not....