What if Irene were to take it into her head to⁠—he could hardly frame the thought⁠—to leave Soames? But he felt this thought so unbearable that he at once put it away; the shady visions it conjured up, the sound of family tongues buzzing in his ears, the horror of the conspicuous happening so close to him, to one of his own children! Luckily, she had no money⁠—a beggarly fifty pound a year! And he thought of the deceased Heron, who had had nothing to leave her, with contempt. Brooding over his glass, his long legs twisted under the table, he quite omitted to rise when the ladies left the room. He would have to speak to Soames⁠—would have to put him on his guard; they could not go on like this, now that such a contingency had occurred to him. And he noticed with sour disfavour that June had left her wineglasses full of wine.

“That little thing’s at the bottom of it all,” he mused; “Irene’d never have thought of it herself.” James was a man of imagination.

The voice of Swithin roused him from his reverie.