When, in 1895, Susan Hayman, the married Forsyte sister, followed her husband at the ludicrously low age of seventy-four, and was cremated, it made strangely little stir among the six old Forsytes left.  For this apathy there were three causes.  First:  the almost surreptitious burial of old Jolyon in 1892 down at Robin Hill—­first of the Forsytes to desert the family grave at Highgate.  That burial, coming a year after Swithin’s entirely proper funeral, had occasioned a great deal of talk on Forsyte ’Change, the abode of Timothy Forsyte on the Bayswater Road, London, which still collected and radiated family gossip.  Opinions ranged from the lamentation of Aunt Juley to the outspoken assertion of Francie that it was ’a jolly good thing to stop all that stuffy Highgate business.’  Uncle Jolyon in his later years—­indeed, ever since the strange and lamentable affair between his granddaughter June’s lover, young Bosinney, and Irene, his nephew Soames Forsyte’s wife—­had noticeably rapped the family’s knuckles; and that way of his own which he had always taken had begun to seem to them a little wayward.  The philosophic vein in him, of course, had always been too liable to crop out of the strata of pure Forsyteism, so they were in a way prepared for his interment in a strange spot.  But the whole thing was an odd business, and when the contents of his Will became current coin on Forsyte ’Change, a shiver had gone round the clan.  Out of his estate (L145,304 gross, with liabilities L35 7s. 4d.) he had actually left L15,000 to “whomever do you think, my dear?  To Irene!” that runaway wife of his nephew Soames; Irene, a woman who had almost disgraced the family, and—­still more amazing was to him no blood relation.  Not out and out, of course; only a life interest—­only the income from it!  Still, there it was; and old Jolyon’s claim to be the perfect Forsyte was ended once for all.  That, then, was the first reason why the burial of Susan Hayman—­at Woking—­made little stir.

The second reason was altogether more expansive and imperial.  Besides the house on Campden Hill, Susan had a place (left her by Hayman when he died) just over the border in Hants, where the Hayman boys had learned to be such good shots and riders, as it was believed, which was of course nice for them, and creditable to everybody; and the fact of owning something really countrified seemed somehow to excuse the dispersion of her remains—­though what could have put cremation into her head they could not think!  The usual invitations, however, had been issued, and Soames had gone down and young Nicholas, and the Will had been quite satisfactory so far as it went, for she had only had a life interest; and everything had gone quite smoothly to the children in equal shares.