A tear started up and wetted his eyelash.  “Well,” he said, “I’m no good here.  I’d better be going.  You’ll come to me as soon as you can, Jo,” and with his head bowed he went away.

It was young Jolyon’s turn to take his stand beside the dead man, round whose fallen body he seemed to see all the Forsytes breathless, and prostrated.  The stroke had fallen too swiftly.

The forces underlying every tragedy—­forces that take no denial, working through cross currents to their ironical end, had met and fused with a thunder-clap, flung out the victim, and flattened to the ground all those that stood around.

Or so at all events young Jolyon seemed to see them, lying around Bosinney’s body.

He asked the Inspector to tell him what had happened, and the latter, like a man who does not every day get such a chance, again detailed such facts as were known.

“There’s more here, sir, however,” he said, “than meets the eye.  I don’t believe in suicide, nor in pure accident, myself.  It’s more likely I think that he was suffering under great stress of mind, and took no notice of things about him.  Perhaps you can throw some light on these.”

He took from his pocket a little packet and laid it on the table.  Carefully undoing it, he revealed a lady’s handkerchief, pinned through the folds with a pin of discoloured Venetian gold, the stone of which had fallen from the socket.  A scent of dried violets rose to young Jolyon’s nostrils.

“Found in his breast pocket,” said the Inspector; “the name has been cut away!”

Young Jolyon with difficulty answered:  “I’m afraid I cannot help you!” But vividly there rose before him the face he had seen light up, so tremulous and glad, at Bosinney’s coming!  Of her he thought more than of his own daughter, more than of them all—­of her with the dark, soft glance, the delicate passive face, waiting for the dead man, waiting even at that moment, perhaps, still and patient in the sunlight.

He walked sorrowfully away from the hospital towards his father’s house, reflecting that this death would break up the Forsyte family.  The stroke had indeed slipped past their defences into the very wood of their tree.  They might flourish to all appearance as before, preserving a brave show before the eyes of London, but the trunk was dead, withered by the same flash that had stricken down Bosinney.  And now the saplings would take its place, each one a new custodian of the sense of property.

Good forest of Forsytes! thought young Jolyon—­soundest timber of our land!

Concerning the cause of this death—­his family would doubtless reject with vigour the suspicion of suicide, which was so compromising!  They would take it as an accident, a stroke of fate.  In their hearts they would even feel it an intervention of Providence, a retribution—­had not Bosinney endangered their two most priceless possessions, the pocket and the hearth?  And they would talk of ’that unfortunate accident of young Bosinney’s,’ but perhaps they would not talk—­silence might be better!