hers--like the bulky Swithin, over six
feet in height, but very lean, as though destined from his birth to
strike a balance and maintain an average, brooded over the scene with
his permanent stoop; his grey eyes had an air of fixed absorption in
some secret worry, broken at intervals by a rapid, shifting scrutiny
of surrounding facts; his cheeks, thinned by two parallel folds, and a
long, clean-shaven upper lip, were framed within Dundreary whiskers. In
his hands he turned and turned a piece of china. Not far off, listening
to a lady in brown, his only son Soames, pale and well-shaved,
dark-haired, rather bald, had poked his chin up sideways, carrying his
nose with that aforesaid appearance of 'sniff,' as though despising an
egg which he knew he could not digest. Behind him his cousin, the tall
George, son of the fifth Forsyte, Roger, had a Quilpish look on his
fleshy face, pondering one of his sardonic jests. Something inherent to
the occasion had affected them all.

Seated in a row close to one another were three ladies--Aunts Ann,
Hester (the two Forsyte maids), and Juley (short for Julia), who not in
first youth had so far forgotten herself as to marry Septimus Small, a
man of poor constitution. She had survived him for many years. With
her elder and younger sister she lived now in the house of Timothy, her
sixth and youngest brother, on the Bayswater Road. Each of these ladies
held fans in their hands, and each with some touch of colour,
some emphatic feather or brooch, testified to the solemnity of the
opportunity.

In the centre of the room, under the chandelier, as became a host, stood
the head of the family, old Jolyon himself. Eighty years of age, with
his fine, white hair, his dome-like forehead, his little, dark grey
eyes, and an immense white moustache, which drooped and spread below the
level of his strong jaw, he had a patriarchal look, and in spite of lean
cheeks and hollows at his temples, seemed master of perennial youth.
He held himself extremely upright, and his shrewd, steady eyes had lost
none of their clear shining. Thus he gave an impression of superiority
to the doubts and dislikes of smaller men. Having had his own way for
innumerable years, he had earned a prescriptive right to it. It would
never have occurred to old Jolyon that it was necessary to wear a look
of doubt or of defiance.

Between him and the four other brothers who were present, James,
Swithin, Nicholas, and Roger, there was m