It was, then, this consciousness of what it meant to be a Forsyte, that made him receive the following letter from old Jolyon, with a mixture of sympathy and disgust: 

’Sheldrake house,
     ’Broadstairs,

’July 1.  ‘My dear Jo,’

(The Dad’s handwriting had altered very little in the thirty odd years that he remembered it.)

’We have been here now a fortnight, and have had good weather on the whole.  The air is bracing, but my liver is out of order, and I shall be glad enough to get back to town.  I cannot say much for June, her health and spirits are very indifferent, and I don’t see what is to come of it.  She says nothing, but it is clear that she is harping on this engagement, which is an engagement and no engagement, and—­goodness knows what.  I have grave doubts whether she ought to be allowed to return to London in the present state of affairs, but she is so self-willed that she might take it into her head to come up at any moment.  The fact is someone ought to speak to Bosinney and ascertain what he means.  I’m afraid of this myself, for I should certainly rap him over the knuckles, but I thought that you, knowing him at the Club, might put in a word, and get to ascertain what the fellow is about.  You will of course in no way commit June.  I shall be glad to hear from you in the course of a few days whether you have succeeded in gaining any information.  The situation is very distressing to me, I worry about it at night.

With my love to Jolly and Holly. 
’I am,
     ’Your affect. father,
‘Jolyon Forsyte.’

Young Jolyon pondered this letter so long and seriously that his wife noticed his preoccupation, and asked him what was the matter.  He replied:  “Nothing.”

It was a fixed principle with him never to allude to June.  She might take alarm, he did not know what she might think; he hastened, therefore, to banish from his manner all traces of absorption, but in this he was about as successful as his father would have been, for he had inherited all old Jolyon’s transparency in matters of domestic finesse; and young Mrs. Jolyon, busying herself over the affairs of the house, went about with tightened lips, stealing at him unfathomable looks.

He started for the Club in the afternoon with the letter in his pocket, and without having made up his mind.

To sound a man as to ‘his intentions’ was peculiarly unpleasant to him; nor did his own anomalous position diminish this unpleasantness.  It was so like his family, so like all the people they knew and mixed with, to enforce what they called their rights over a man, to bring him up to the mark; so like them to carry their business principles into their private relations.

And how that phrase in the letter—­’You will, of course, in no way commit June’—­gave the whole thing away.

Yet the letter, with the personal grievance, the concern for June, the ‘rap over the knuckles,’ was all so natural.  No wonder his father wanted to know what Bosinney meant, no wonder he was angry.