nd there was style about him--it
was a thousand pities he had run off with that half-foreign governess!
If he must go off like that why couldn't he have chosen someone who would
have done them credit! And what was he now?--an underwriter at Lloyd's;
they said he even painted pictures--pictures! Damme! he might have ended
as Sir Jolyon Forsyte, Bart., with a seat in Parliament, and a place in
the country!

It was Swithin who, following the impulse which sooner or later urges
thereto some member of every great family, went to the Heralds' Office,
where they assured him that he was undoubtedly of the same family as the
well-known Forsites with an 'i,' whose arms were 'three dexter buckles on
a sable ground gules,' hoping no doubt to get him to take them up.

Swithin, however, did not do this, but having ascertained that the crest
was a 'pheasant proper,' and the motto 'For Forsite,' he had the pheasant
proper placed upon his carriage and the buttons of his coachman, and both
crest and motto on his writing-paper. The arms he hugged to himself,
partly because, not having paid for them, he thought it would look
ostentatious to put them on his carriage, and he hated ostentation, and
partly because he, like any practical man all over the country, had a
secret dislike and contempt for things he could not understand he found
it hard, as anyone might, to swallow 'three dexter buckles on a sable
ground gules.'

He never forgot, however, their having told him that if he paid for them
he would be entitled to use them, and it strengthened his conviction that
he was a gentleman. Imperceptibly the rest of the family absorbed the
'pheasant proper,' and some, more serious than others, adopted the motto;
old Jolyon, however, refused to use the latter, saying that it was humbug
meaning nothing, so far as he could see.

Among the older generation it was perhaps known at bottom from what great
historical event they derived their crest; and if pressed on the subject,
sooner than tell a lie--they did not like telling lies, having an
impression that only Frenchmen and Russians told them--they would confess
hurriedly that Swithin had got hold of it somehow.

Among the younger generation the matter was wrapped in a discretion
proper. They did not want to hurt the feelings of their elders, nor to
feel ridiculous themselves; they simply used the crest....

"No," said Swithin, "he had had an opportunity of seeing for himself, and
what he sh