The Forsyte Saga - Volume 1

"Who is that girl with yellow hair and dark eyes?" he asked.

"That--oh! Irene Heron. Her father, Professor Heron, died this year.

She lives with her stepmother. She's a nice girl, a pretty girl, but no

money!"

"Introduce me, please," said Soames.

It was very little that he found to say, nor did he find her responsive

to that little. But he went away with the resolution to see her again.

He effected his object by chance, meeting her on the pier with her

stepmother, who had the habit of walking there from twelve to one of a

forenoon. Soames made this lady's acquaintance with alacrity, nor was

it long before he perceived in her the ally he was looking for. His keen

scent for the commercial side of family life soon told him that Irene

cost her stepmother more than the fifty pounds a year she brought her;

it also told him that Mrs. Heron, a woman yet in the prime of life,

desired to be married again. The strange ripening beauty of her

stepdaughter stood in the way of this desirable consummation. And

Soames, in his stealthy tenacity, laid his plans.

He left Bournemouth without having given himself away, but in a month's

time came back, and this time he spoke, not to the girl, but to her

stepmother. He had made up his mind, he said; he would wait any time.

And he had long to wait, watching Irene bloom, the lines of her young

figure softening, the stronger blood deepening the gleam of her eyes,

and warming her face to a creamy glow; and at each visit he proposed to

her, and when that visit was at an end, took her refusal away with him,

back to London, sore at heart, but steadfast and silent as the grave. He

tried to come at the secret springs of her resistance; only once had he

a gleam of light. It was at one of those assembly dances, which

afford the only outlet to the passions of the population of seaside

watering-places. He was sitting with her in an embrasure, his senses

tingling with the contact of the waltz. She had looked at him over her,

slowly waving fan; and he had lost his head. Seizing that moving wrist,

he pressed his lips to the flesh of her arm. And she had shuddered--to

this day he had not forgotten that shudder--nor the look so passionately

averse she had given him.

A year after that she had yielded. What had made her yield he could

never make out; and from Mrs. Heron, a woman of some diplomatic talent,

he learnt nothing. Once after they were married he asked her, "What

made you refuse me so often?" She had answered by a strange silence. An

enigma to him from the day that he first saw her, she was an enigma to

him still....