“Was she divorced?” asked Imogen from the door.
“Certainly not,” cried Aunt Juley; “that is—certainly not.”
A sound was heard over by the far door. Timothy had re-entered the back drawing-room. “I’ve come for my map,” he said. “Who’s been divorced?”
“No one, Uncle,” replied Francie with perfect truth.
Timothy took his map off the piano.
“Don’t let’s have anything of that sort in the family,” he said. “All this enlistin’s bad enough. The country’s breakin’ up; I don’t know what we’re comin’ to.” He shook a thick finger at the room: “Too many women nowadays, and they don’t know what they want.”
So saying, he grasped the map firmly with both hands, and went out as if afraid of being answered.
The seven women whom he had addressed broke into a subdued murmur, out of which emerged Francie’s, “Really, the Forsytes!” and Aunt Juley’s: “He must have his feet in mustard and hot water to-night, Hester; will you tell Jane? The blood has gone to his head again, I’m afraid....”
That evening, when she and Hester were sitting alone after dinner, she dropped a stitch in her crochet, and looked up:
“Hester, I can’t think where I’ve heard that dear Soames wants Irene to come back to him again. Who was it told us that George had made a funny drawing of him with the words, ‘He won’t be happy till he gets it’.”