Mrs. Septimus Small, drawing herself up with a creak and rustle of her whole person, said, shivering in her dignity:

“My dear, it is a subject we do not talk about!”

Night in the Park

Although with her infallible instinct Mrs. Small had said the very thing to make her guest “more intriguée than ever,” it is difficult to see how else she could truthfully have spoken.

It was not a subject which the Forsytes could talk about even among themselves⁠—to use the word Soames had invented to characterize to himself the situation, it was “subterranean.”