The sudden flush that rose on the girl’s intent young face—­she must have seen spring up before her a great hope—­the sudden sweetness of her smile, often came back to Lady Baynes in after years (Baynes was knighted when he built that public Museum of Art which has given so much employment to officials, and so little pleasure to those working classes for whom it was designed).

The memory of that change, vivid and touching, like the breaking open of a flower, or the first sun after long winter, the memory, too, of all that came after, often intruded itself, unaccountably, inopportunely on Lady Baynes, when her mind was set upon the most important things.

This was the very afternoon of the day that young Jolyon witnessed the meeting in the Botanical Gardens, and on this day, too, old Jolyon paid a visit to his solicitors, Forsyte, Bustard, and Forsyte, in the Poultry.  Soames was not in, he had gone down to Somerset House; Bustard was buried up to the hilt in papers and that inaccessible apartment, where he was judiciously placed, in order that he might do as much work as possible; but James was in the front office, biting a finger, and lugubriously turning over the pleadings in Forsyte v.  Bosinney.

This sound lawyer had only a sort of luxurious dread of the ‘nice point,’ enough to set up a pleasurable feeling of fuss; for his good practical sense told him that if he himself were on the Bench he would not pay much attention to it.  But he was afraid that this Bosinney would go bankrupt and Soames would have to find the money after all, and costs into the bargain.  And behind this tangible dread there was always that intangible trouble, lurking in the background, intricate, dim, scandalous, like a bad dream, and of which this action was but an outward and visible sign.

He raised his head as old Jolyon came in, and muttered:  “How are you, Jolyon?  Haven’t seen you for an age.  You’ve been to Switzerland, they tell me.  This young Bosinney, he’s got himself into a mess.  I knew how it would be!” He held out the papers, regarding his elder brother with nervous gloom.

Old Jolyon read them in silence, and while he read them James looked at the floor, biting his fingers the while.

Old Jolyon pitched them down at last, and they fell with a thump amongst a mass of affidavits in ‘re Buncombe, deceased,’ one of the many branches of that parent and profitable tree, ‘Fryer v.  Forsyte.’

“I don’t know what Soames is about,” he said, “to make a fuss over a few hundred pounds.  I thought he was a man of property.”

James’ long upper lip twitched angrily; he could not bear his son to be attacked in such a spot.

“It’s not the money,” he began, but meeting his brother’s glance, direct, shrewd, judicial, he stopped.

There was a silence.

“I’ve come in for my Will,” said old Jolyon at last, tugging at his moustache.

James’ curiosity was roused at once.  Perhaps nothing in this life was more stimulating to him than a Will; it was the supreme deal with property, the final inventory of a man’s belongings, the last word on what he was worth.  He sounded the bell.