The butler asked whether Mrs. Soames was in the cab, the master had told him they were both expected to dinner.
Soames answered: “No. Mrs. Forsyte has a cold.”
The butler was sorry.
Soames thought he was looking at him inquisitively, and remembering that he was not in dress clothes, asked: “Anybody here to dinner, Warmson?”
“Nobody but Mr. and Mrs. Dartie, sir.”
Again it seemed to Soames that the butler was looking curiously at him. His composure gave way.
“What are you looking at?” he said. “What’s the matter with me, eh?”
The butler blushed, hung up the fur coat, murmured something that sounded like: “Nothing, sir, I’m sure, sir,” and stealthily withdrew.
Soames walked upstairs. Passing the drawing-room without a look, he went straight up to his mother’s and father’s bedroom.
James, standing sideways, the concave lines of his tall, lean figure displayed to advantage in shirt-sleeves and evening waistcoat, his head bent, the end of his white tie peeping askew from underneath one white Dundreary whisker, his eyes peering with intense concentration, his lips pouting, was hooking the top hooks of his wife’s bodice. Soames stopped; he felt half-choked, whether because he had come upstairs too fast, or for some other reason. He—he himself had never—never been asked to....