"As to your--your stepmother," he said, using the word with some little
difficulty, "I call her a refined woman--a bit of a Mrs. Gummidge,
I shouldn't wonder--but very fond of Jo. And the children," he
repeated--indeed, this sentence ran like music through all his solemn
self-justification--"are sweet little things!"
If June had known, those words but reincarnated that tender love for
little children, for the young and weak, which in the past had made
him desert his son for her tiny self, and now, as the cycle rolled, was
taking him from her.
But he began to get alarmed at her silence, and asked impatiently:
"Well, what do you say?"
June slid down to his knee, and she in her turn began her tale. She
thought it would all go splendidly; she did not see any difficulty, and
she did not care a bit what people thought.
Old Jolyon wriggled. H'm! then people would think! He had thought that
after all these years perhaps they wouldn't! Well, he couldn't help it!
Nevertheless, he could not approve of his granddaughter's way of putting
it--she ought to mind what people thought!
Yet he said nothing. His feelings were too mixed, too inconsistent for
expression.
No--went on June he did not care; what business was it of theirs? There
was only one thing--and with her cheek pressing against his knee, old
Jolyon knew at once that this something was no trifle: As he was going
to buy a house in the country, would he not--to please her--buy that
splendid house of Soames' at Robin Hill? It was finished, it was
perfectly beautiful, and no one would live in it now. They would all be
so happy there.
Old Jolyon was on the alert at once. Wasn't the 'man of property' going
to live in his new house, then? He never alluded to Soames now but under
this title.
"No"--June said--"he was not; she knew that he was not!"
How did she know?
She could not tell him, but she knew. She knew nearly for certain! It
was most unlikely; circumstances had changed! Irene's words still rang
in her head: "I have left Soames. Where should I go?"
But she kept silence about that.
If her grandfather would only buy it and settle that wretched claim that
ought never to have been made on Phil! It would be the very best thing
for everybody, and everything--everything might come straight.
And June put her lips to his forehead, and pressed them close.
But old Jolyon freed himself from her caress, his face wore the judicial
look which came upon it when he dealt with affairs. He asked: What
did she mean? There was something behind all this--had she been seeing
Bosinney?