The perfect luxury of his latter days had embedded him like a fly in sugar; and his mind, where very little took place from morning till night, was the junction of two curiously opposite emotions, a lingering and sturdy satisfaction that he had made his own way and his own fortune, and a sense that a man of his distinction should never have been allowed to soil his mind with work.

He stood at the sideboard in a white waistcoat with large gold and onyx buttons, watching his valet screw the necks of three champagne bottles deeper into ice-pails.  Between the points of his stand-up collar, which—­though it hurt him to move—­he would on no account have had altered, the pale flesh of his under chin remained immovable.  His eyes roved from bottle to bottle.  He was debating, and he argued like this:  Jolyon drinks a glass, perhaps two, he’s so careful of himself.  James, he can’t take his wine nowadays.  Nicholas—­Fanny and he would swill water he shouldn’t wonder!  Soames didn’t count; these young nephews —­Soames was thirty-one—­couldn’t drink!  But Bosinney?

Encountering in the name of this stranger something outside the range of his philosophy, Swithin paused.  A misgiving arose within him!  It was impossible to tell!  June was only a girl, in love too!  Emily (Mrs. James) liked a good glass of champagne.  It was too dry for Juley, poor old soul, she had no palate.  As to Hatty Chessman!  The thought of this old friend caused a cloud of thought to obscure the perfect glassiness of his eyes:  He shouldn’t wonder if she drank half a bottle!

But in thinking of his remaining guest, an expression like that of a cat who is just going to purr stole over his old face:  Mrs. Soames!  She mightn’t take much, but she would appreciate what she drank; it was a pleasure to give her good wine!  A pretty woman—­and sympathetic to him!

The thought of her was like champagne itself!  A pleasure to give a good wine to a young woman who looked so well, who knew how to dress, with charming manners, quite distinguished—­a pleasure to entertain her.  Between the points of his collar he gave his head the first small, painful oscillation of the evening.

“Adolf!” he said.  “Put in another bottle.”

He himself might drink a good deal, for, thanks to that prescription of Blight’s, he found himself extremely well, and he had been careful to take no lunch.  He had not felt so well for weeks.  Puffing out his lower lip, he gave his last instructions: 

“Adolf, the least touch of the West India when you come to the ham.”

Passing into the anteroom, he sat down on the edge of a chair, with his knees apart; and his tall, bulky form was wrapped at once in an expectant, strange, primeval immobility.  He was ready to rise at a moment’s notice.  He had not given a dinner-party for months.  This dinner in honour of June’s engagement had seemed a bore at first (among Forsytes the custom of solemnizing engagements by feasts was religiously observed), but the labours of sending invitations and ordering the repast over, he felt pleasantly stimulated.