Winifred, who had adopted a kind of half-mourning which became her fair
hair and tall figure very well, arrived in James' barouche drawn by
James' pair. Soames had not seen it in the City since his father retired
from business five years ago, and its incongruity gave him a shock.
'Times are changing,' he thought; 'one doesn't know what'll go next!'
Top hats even were scarcer. He enquired after Val. Val, said Winifred,
wrote that he was going to play polo next term. She thought he was in a
very good set. She added with fashionably disguised anxiety: "Will there
be much publicity about my affair, Soames? Must it be in the papers?
It's so bad for him, and the girls."
With his own calamity all raw within him, Soames answered:
"The papers are a pushing lot; it's very difficult to keep things out.
They pretend to be guarding the public's morals, and they corrupt them
with their beastly reports. But we haven't got to that yet. We're
only seeing Dreamer to-day on the restitution question. Of course he
understands that it's to lead to a divorce; but you must seem genuinely
anxious to get Dartie back--you might practice that attitude to-day."
Winifred sighed.
"Oh! What a clown Monty's been!" she said.
Soames gave her a sharp look. It was clear to him that she could not
take her Dartie seriously, and would go back on the whole thing if given
half a chance. His own instinct had been firm in this matter from the
first. To save a little scandal now would only bring on his sister and
her children real disgrace and perhaps ruin later on if Dartie were
allowed to hang on to them, going down-hill and spending the money James
would leave his daughter. Though it was all tied up, that fellow would
milk the settlements somehow, and make his family pay through the
nose to keep him out of bankruptcy or even perhaps gaol! They left
the shining carriage, with the shining horses and the shining-hatted
servants on the Embankment, and walked up to Dreamer Q.C.'s Chambers in
Crown Office Row.
"Mr. Bellby is here, sir," said the clerk; "Mr. Dreamer will be ten
minutes."
Mr. Bellby, the junior--not as junior as he might have been, for Soames
only employed barristers of established reputation; it was, indeed,
something of a mystery to him how barristers ever managed to establish
that which made him employ them--Mr. Bellby was seated, taking a final
glance through his papers. He had come from Court, and was in wig and
gown, which suited a nose jutting out like the handle of a tiny pump,
his small shrewd blue eyes, and rather protruding lower lip--no better
man to supplement and stiffen Dreamer.