He had resumed the ‘tall hat’ habit after the failure of the general and coal strikes in 1921, his instinct having told him that revolution would be at a discount for some considerable period.

‘About this thing,’ he said, taking out the pink parcel, ‘I don’t know what you’ll do with it, but here it is.’

It was a curiously carved and coloured bit of opal in a ring of tiny brilliants.

‘Oh!’ Fleur cried: ‘What a delicious thing!’

‘Venus floating on the waves or something,’ murmured Soames. ‘Uncommon. You want a strong light on it.’

‘But it’s lovely. I shall put it on at once.’

Venus! If Dad had known! She put her arms round his neck to disguise her sense of à propos. Soames received the rub of her cheek against his own well-shaved face with his usual stillness. Why demonstrate when they were both aware that his affection was double hers?

‘Put it on then,’ he said, ‘and let’s see.’

Fleur pinned it at her neck before an old lacquered mirror. ‘It’s a jewel. Thank you, darling! Yes, your tie is straight. I like that white piping. You ought always to wear it with black. Now, come along!’ And she drew him into her Chinese room. It was empty.

‘Bart must be up with Michael, talking about his new book.’

‘Writing at his age?’ said Soames.

‘Well, ducky, he’s a year younger than you.’

‘I don’t write. Not such a fool. Got any more new-fangled friends?’

‘Just one – Gurdon Minho, the novelist.’

‘Another of the new school?’

‘Oh, no, dear! Surely you’ve heard of Gurdon Minho; he’s older than the hills.’

‘They’re all alike to me,’ muttered Soames. ‘Is he well thought of?’

‘I should think his income is larger than yours. He’s almost a classic – only waiting to die.’

‘I’ll get one of his books and read it. What name did you say?’

‘Get Big and Little Fishes, by Gurdon Minho. You can remember that, can’t you? Oh! here they are! Michael, look at what Father’s given me.’

Taking his hand, she put it up to the opal at her neck. ‘Let them both see,’ she thought, ‘what good terms we’re on.’ Though her father had not seen her with Wilfrid in the gallery, her conscience still said: ‘Strengthen your respectability, you don’t quite know how much support you’ll need for it in future.’

And out of the corner of her eye she watched those two. The meetings between ‘Old Mont’ and ‘Old Forsyte’ – as she knew Bart called her father when speaking of him to Michael – always made her want to laugh, but she never quite knew why. Bart knew everything, but his knowledge was beautifully bound, strictly edited by a mind tethered to the ‘eighteenth century’. Her father only knew what was of advantage to him, but the knowledge was unbound, and subject to no editorship. If he was late Victorian, he was not above profiting if necessary by even later periods. ‘Old Mont’ had faith in tradition; ‘Old Forsyte’ none. Fleur’s acuteness had long perceived a difference which favoured her father. Yet ‘Old Mont’s’ talk was so much more up-to-date, rapid, glancing, garrulous, redolent of precise information; and ‘Old Forsyte’s’ was constricted, matter-of-fact. Really impossible to tell which of the two was the better museum specimen; and both so well-preserved!

They did not precisely shake hands; but Soames mentioned the weather. And almost at once they all four sought that Sunday food which by a sustained effort of will Fleur had at last deprived of reference to the British character. They partook, in fact, of lobster cocktails, and a mere risotto of chickens’ livers, an omelette au rhum, and dessert trying to look as Spanish as it could.

‘I’ve been in the Tate,’ Fleur said; ‘I do think it’s touching.’

‘Touching?’ queried Soames with a sniff.

‘Fleur means, sir, that to see so much old English art together is like looking at a baby show.’

‘I don’t follow,’ said Soames stiffly. ‘There’s some very good work there.’

‘But not grown-up, sir.’

‘Ah! You young people mistake all this crazy cleverness for maturity.’

‘That’s not what Michael means, Father.