"Adorable! Le soleil est si bon! How everything is chic, is it not, Annette?
Monsieur is a real Monte Cristo." Annette murmured assent, with a look up at Soames which he could not read.

He proposed a turn on the river.

But to punt two persons when one of them looked so ravishing on those Chinese cushions was merely to suffer from a sense of lost opportunity; so they went but a short way towards Pangbourne, drifting slowly back, with every now and then an autumn leaf dropping on Annette or on her mother's black amplitude.

And Soames was not happy, worried by the thought: 'How--when--where--can I say--what ?' They did not yet even know that he was married.

To tell them he was married might jeopardise his every chance; yet, if he did not definitely make them understand that he wished for Annette's hand, it would be dropping into some other clutch before he was free to claim it.
At tea, which they both took with lemon, Soames spoke of the Transvaal.
"There'll be war," he said.
Madame Lamotte lamented.
"Ces pauvres gens bergers!" Could they not be left to themselves?
Soames smiled--the question seemed to him absurd.
Surely as a woman of business she understood that the British could not abandon their legitimate commercial interests.
"Ah! that!" But Madame Lamotte found that the English were a little hypocrite.