Portraiture was not Jolyon’s forte, but he had already drawn his younger daughter three times, and was drawing her a fourth, on the afternoon of October 4th, 1899, when a card was brought to him which caused his eyebrows to go up: 

        Mr. Soames Forsyte

The shelter, connoisseurs club, Mapledurham.  St. James’s.

But here the Forsyte Saga must digress again....

To return from a long travel in Spain to a darkened house, to a little daughter bewildered with tears, to the sight of a loved father lying peaceful in his last sleep, had never been, was never likely to be, forgotten by so impressionable and warm-hearted a man as Jolyon.  A sense as of mystery, too, clung to that sad day, and about the end of one whose life had been so well-ordered, balanced, and above-board.  It seemed incredible that his father could thus have vanished without, as it were, announcing his intention, without last words to his son, and due farewells.  And those incoherent allusions of little Holly to ’the lady in grey,’ of Mademoiselle Beauce to a Madame Errant (as it sounded) involved all things in a mist, lifted a little when he read his father’s will and the codicil thereto.  It had been his duty as executor of that will and codicil to inform Irene, wife of his cousin Soames, of her life interest in fifteen thousand pounds.  He had called on her to explain that the existing investment in India Stock, ear-marked to meet the charge, would produce for her the interesting net sum of L430 odd a year, clear of income tax.  This was but the third time he had seen his cousin Soames’ wife—­if indeed she was still his wife, of which he was not quite sure.  He remembered having seen her sitting in the Botanical Gardens waiting for Bosinney—­a passive, fascinating figure, reminding him of Titian’s ‘Heavenly Love,’ and again, when, charged by his father, he had gone to Montpellier Square on the afternoon when Bosinney’s death was known.  He still recalled vividly her sudden appearance in the drawing-room doorway on that occasion—­her beautiful face, passing from wild eagerness of hope to stony despair; remembered the compassion he had felt, Soames’ snarling smile, his words, “We are not at home!” and the slam of the front door.

This third time he saw a face and form more beautiful—­freed from that warp of wild hope and despair.  Looking at her, he thought:  ’Yes, you are just what the Dad would have admired!’ And the strange story of his father’s Indian summer became slowly clear to him.  She spoke of old Jolyon with reverence and tears in her eyes.  “He was so wonderfully kind to me; I don’t know why.  He looked so beautiful and peaceful sitting in that chair under the tree; it was I who first came on him sitting there, you know.  Such a lovely day.  I don’t think an end could have been happier.  We should all like to go out like that.”