“Tell me about it, Father!”
Soames became very still.
“What should you want to know about such things, at your age?”
“Is she alive?”
He nodded.
“And married?”
“Yes.”
“It's Jon Forsyte's mother, isn't it? And she was your wife first.”
It was said in a flash of intuition. Surely his opposition came from his anxiety that she should not know of that old wound to his pride. But she was startled. To see some one so old and calm wince as if struck, to hear so sharp a note of pain in his voice!
“Who told you that? If your aunt! I can't bear the affair talked of.”