Yet to have done with the Law, not to have that murky cloud hanging over her and the children! What a relief! Ah! but how to accept his return? That “woman” had ravaged him, taken from him passion such as he had never bestowed on herself, such as she had not thought him capable of. There was the sting! That selfish, blatant “clown” of hers, whom she herself had never really stirred, had been swept and ungarnished by another woman! Insulting! Too insulting! Not right, not decent to take him back! And yet she had asked for him; the Law perhaps would make her now! He was as much her husband as ever—she had put herself out of court! And all he wanted, no doubt, was money—to keep him in cigars and lavender-water! That scent! “After all, I’m not old,” she thought, “not old yet!” But that woman who had reduced him to those words: “I’ve been through it. I’ve been frightened—frightened, Freddie!” She neared her father’s house, driven this way and that, while all the time the Forsyte undertow was drawing her to deep conclusion that after all he was her property, to be held against a robbing world. And so she came to James’.
“Mr. Soames? In his room? I’ll go up; don’t say I’m here.”
Her brother was dressing. She found him before a mirror, tying a black bow with an air of despising its ends.
“Hullo!” he said, contemplating her in the glass; “what’s wrong?”
“Monty!” said Winifred stonily.
Soames spun round. “What!”
“Back!”
“Hoist,” muttered Soames, “with our own petard. Why the deuce didn’t you let me try cruelty? I always knew it was too much risk this way.”
“Oh! Don’t talk about that! What shall I do?”
Soames answered, with a deep, deep sound.