"I'm awfully sorry to have to leave you,Mother.""Well,I must make the best of it.We must try and get you a commission as soon as we can;then you won't have to rough it so.
Do you know any drill,Val?"
"Not a scrap."
"I hope they won't worry you much.I must take you about to get the things to-morrow.Good-night;kiss me."With that kiss,soft and hot,between his eyes,and those words,'Ihope they won't worry you much,'in his ears,he sat down to a cigarette,before a dying fire.The heat was out of him--the glow of cutting a dash.It was all a damned heart-aching bore.'I'll be even with that chap Jolly,'he thought,trailing up the stairs,past the room where his mother was biting her pillow to smother a sense of desolation which was trying to make her sob.
And soon only one of the diners at James'was awake--Soames,in his bedroom above his father's.
So that fellow Jolyon was in Paris--what was he doing there?
Hanging round Irene!The last report from Polteed had hinted that there might be something soon.Could it be this?That fellow,with his beard and his cursed amused way of speaking--son of the old man who had given him the nickname 'Man of Property,'and bought the fatal house from him.Soames had ever resented having had to sell the house at Robin Hill;never forgiven his uncle for having bought it,or his cousin for living in it.
Reckless of the cold,he threw his window up and gazed out across the Park.Bleak and dark the January night;little sound of traffic;a frost coming;bare trees;a star or two.'I'll see Polteed to-morrow,'he thought.'By God!I'm mad,I think,to want her still.That fellow!If.?Um!No!'