In the hall an Inspector of Police stood stolidly regarding with heavy-lidded pale-blue eyes the fine old English furniture picked up by James at the famous Mavrojano sale in Portman Square.  “You’ll find my brother in there,” said James.

The Inspector raised his fingers respectfully to his peaked cap, and entered the study.

James saw him go in with a strange sensation.

“Well,” he said to Soames, “I suppose we must wait and see what he wants.  Your uncle’s been here about the house!”

He returned with Soames into the dining-room, but could not rest.

“Now what does he want?” he murmured again.

“Who?” replied Soames:  “the Inspector?  They sent him round from Stanhope Gate, that’s all I know.  That ‘nonconformist’ of Uncle Jolyon’s has been pilfering, I shouldn’t wonder!”

But in spite of his calmness, he too was ill at ease.

At the end of ten minutes old Jolyon came in.  He walked up to the table, and stood there perfectly silent pulling at his long white moustaches.  James gazed up at him with opening mouth; he had never seen his brother look like this.

Old Jolyon raised his hand, and said slowly: 

“Young Bosinney has been run over in the fog and killed.”

Then standing above his brother and his nephew, and looking down at him with his deep eyes: 

“There’s—­some—­talk—­of—­suicide,” he said.

James’ jaw dropped.  “Suicide!  What should he do that for?”

Old Jolyon answered sternly:  “God knows, if you and your son don’t!”

But James did not reply.

For all men of great age, even for all Forsytes, life has had bitter experiences.  The passer-by, who sees them wrapped in cloaks of custom, wealth, and comfort, would never suspect that such black shadows had fallen on their roads.  To every man of great age—­to Sir Walter Bentham himself—­the idea of suicide has once at least been present in the ante-room of his soul; on the threshold, waiting to enter, held out from the inmost chamber by some chance reality, some vague fear, some painful hope.  To Forsytes that final renunciation of property is hard.  Oh! it is hard!  Seldom—­perhaps never—­can they achieve, it; and yet, how near have they not sometimes been!

So even with James!  Then in the medley of his thoughts, he broke out:  “Why I saw it in the paper yesterday:  ‘Run over in the fog!’ They didn’t know his name!” He turned from one face to the other in his confusion of soul; but instinctively all the time he was rejecting that rumour of suicide.  He dared not entertain this thought, so against his interest, against the interest of his son, of every Forsyte.  He strove against it; and as his nature ever unconsciously rejected that which it could not with safety accept, so gradually he overcame this fear.  It was an accident!  It must have been!

Old Jolyon broke in on his reverie.