The chief partner’s room was on the first floor, and the chief partner standing where chief partners stand.

“How do you do, Mr. Forsyte? I’ve not met you since ‘Bobbin against the L. & S. W.’ That must have been 1900!”

“1899,” said Soames. “You were for the Company.”

Mr. Settlewhite pointed to a chair.

Soames sat down and glanced up at the figure before the fire. H’m! A long-lipped, long-eyelashed, long-chinned face; a man of his own calibre, education, and probity! He would not beat about the bush.

“This action,” he said, “is a very petty business. What can we do about it?”

Mr. Settlewhite frowned.

“That depends, Mr. Forsyte, on what you have to propose? My client has been very grossly libelled.”

Soames smiled sourly.

“She began it. And what is she relying on—private letters to personal friends of my daughter’s, written in very natural anger! I’m surprised that a firm of your standing—”

Mr. Settlewhite smiled.

“Don’t trouble to compliment my firm! I’m surprised myself that you’re acting for your daughter. You can hardly see all round the matter. Have you come to offer an apology?”

“That!” said Soames. “I should have thought it was for your client to apologise.”

“If such is your view, I’m afraid it’s no use continuing this discussion.”

Soames regarded him fixedly.

“How do you think you’re going to prove damage? She belongs to the fast set.”

Mr. Settlewhite continued to smile.

“I understand she’s going to marry Sir Alexander MacGown,” said Soames.

Mr. Settlewhite’s lips tightened.

“Really, Mr. Forsyte, if you have come to offer an apology and a substantial sum in settlement, we can talk. Otherwise—”

“As a sensible man,” said Soames, “you know that these Society scandals are always dead sea fruit—nothing but costs and vexation, and a feast for all the gossips about town. I’m prepared to offer you a thousand pounds to settle the whole thing, but an apology I can’t look at. A mutual expression of regret—perhaps; but an apology’s out of the question.”

“Fifteen hundred I might accept—the insults have had wide currency. But an apology is essential.”

Soames sat silent, chewing the injustice of it all. Fifteen hundred! Monstrous! Still he would pay even that to keep Fleur out of Court. But humble-pie! She wouldn’t eat it, and he couldn’t make her, and he didn’t know that he wanted to. He got up.

“Look here, Mr. Settlewhite, if you take this into Court, you will find yourself up against more than you think. But the whole thing is so offensive to me, that I’m prepared to meet you over the money, though I tell you frankly I don’t believe a Jury would award a penny piece. As to an apology, a ‘formula’ could be found, perhaps”—why the deuce was the fellow smiling?—“something like this: ‘We regret that we have said hasty things about each other,’ to be signed by both parties.”

Mr. Settlewhite caressed his chin.

“Well, I’ll put your proposition before my client. I join with you in wishing to see the matter settled, not because I’m afraid of the result”—‘Oh, no!’ thought Soames—“but because these cases, as you say, are not edifying.” He held out his hand.

Soames gave it a cold touch.

“You understand that this is entirely ‘without prejudice,’” he said, and went on. ‘She’ll take it!’ he thought. Fifteen hundred pounds of his money thrown away on that baggage, just because for once she had been labelled what she was; and all his trouble to get evidence wasted! For a moment he resented his devotion to Fleur. Really it was fatuous to be so fond as that! Then his heart rebounded. Thank God! He had settled it.

Christmas was at hand. It did not alarm him, therefore, that he received no answering communication. Fleur and Michael were at Lippinghall with the ninth and eleventh baronets. He and Annette had Winifred and the Cardigans down at ‘The Shelter.’ Not till the 6th of January did he receive a letter from Messrs. Settlewhite and Stark.

Soames turned to the enclosure. It ran thus:

Pushing back the breakfast-table, so violently that it groaned, Soames got up.

“What is it, Soames?” said Annette. “Have you broken your plate again? You should not bite so hard.”

“Read that!”

Annette read.

“You would give that woman fifteen hundred pounds? I think you are mad, Soames. I would not give her fifteen hundred pence! Pay this woman, and she tells her friends. That is fifteen hundred apologies in all their minds. Really, Soames—I am surprised. A man of business, a clever man! Do you not know the world better than that? With every pound you pay, Fleur eats her words!”

Soames flushed. It was so French, and yet somehow it was so true. He walked to the window. The French—they had no sense of compromise, and every sense of money!

“Well,” he said, “that ends it anyway. She won’t sign. And I shall withdraw my offer.”

“I should hope so. Fleur has a good head. She will look very pretty in Court. I think that woman will be sorry she ever lived! Why don’t you have her what you call shadowed? It is no good to be delicate with women like that.”

In a weak moment he had told Annette about the book and the play; for, unable to speak of them to Fleur and Michael, he had really had to tell some one; indeed, he had shown her “Canthar,” with the words: “I don’t advise you to read it; it’s very French.”

Annette had returned it to him two days later, saying: “It is not French at all; it is disgusting. You English are so coarse. It has no wit. It is only nasty. A serious nasty book—that is the limit. You are so old-fashioned, Soames. Why do you say this book is French?”

Soames, who really didn’t know why, had muttered:

“Well, they can’t get it printed in England.” And with the words: “Bruxelles, Bruxelles, you call Bruxelles—” buzzing about his ears, had left the room. He had never known any people so touchy as the French!

Her remark about ‘shadowing,’ however, was not easily forgotten. Why be squeamish, when all depended on frightening this woman? And on arriving in London he visited an office that was not Mr. Polteed’s, and gave instructions for the shadowing of Marjorie Ferrar’s past, present, and future.

His answer to Settlewhite and Stark, too, was brief, determined, and written on the paper of his own firm.

If he did not mistake, they would be sorry. And he gazed at the words ‘in toto’; somehow they looked funny. In toto! And now for “The Plain Dealer”!

The theatre of the ‘Ne Plus Ultra’ Play-producing Society had a dingy exterior, a death-mask of Congreve in the hall, a peculiar smell, and an apron stage. There was no music. They hit something three times before the curtain went up. There were no footlights. The scenery was peculiar—Soames could not take his eyes off it till, in the first Entr’acte, its principle was revealed to him by the conversation of two people sitting just behind.