’We defy you to bore us.  Life isn’t half long enough, and we’re going to talk faster and more crisply, do more and know more, and dwell less on any subject than you can possibly imagine.  We are “the best”—­made of wire and whipcord.’  And Val was unconsciously forming himself on a set whose motto was:  ’We defy you to interest or excite us.  We have had every sensation, or if we haven’t, we pretend we have.  We are so exhausted with living that no hours are too small for us.  We will lose our shirts with equanimity.  We have flown fast and are past everything.  All is cigarette smoke.  Bismillah!’ Competitive spirit, bone-deep in the English, was obliging those two young Forsytes to have ideals; and at the close of a century ideals are mixed.  The aristocracy had already in the main adopted the ‘jumping-Jesus’ principle; though here and there one like Crum—­who was an ’honourable’—­stood starkly languid for that gambler’s Nirvana which had been the summum bonum of the old ‘dandies’ and of ‘the mashers’ in the eighties.  And round Crum were still gathered a forlorn hope of blue-bloods with a plutocratic following.

But there was between the cousins another far less obvious antipathy—­coming from the unseizable family resemblance, which each perhaps resented; or from some half-consciousness of that old feud persisting still between their branches of the clan, formed within them by odd words or half-hints dropped by their elders.  And Jolly, tinkling his teaspoon, was musing:  ’His tie-pin and his waistcoat and his drawl and his betting—­good Lord!’

And Val, finishing his bun, was thinking:  ‘He’s rather a young beast!’

“I suppose you’ll be meeting your people?” he said, getting up.  “I wish you’d tell them I should like to show them over B.N.C.—­not that there’s anything much there—­if they’d care to come.”

“Thanks, I’ll ask them.”

“Would they lunch?  I’ve got rather a decent scout.”

Jolly doubted if they would have time.

“You’ll ask them, though?”

“Very good of you,” said Jolly, fully meaning that they should not go; but, instinctively polite, he added:  “You’d better come and have dinner with us to-morrow.”

“Rather.  What time?”

“Seven-thirty.”

“Dress?”

“No.”  And they parted, a subtle antagonism alive within them.

Holly and her father arrived by a midday train.  It was her first visit to the city of spires and dreams, and she was very silent, looking almost shyly at the brother who was part of this wonderful place.  After lunch she wandered, examining his household gods with intense curiosity.  Jolly’s sitting-room was panelled, and Art represented by a set of Bartolozzi prints which had belonged to old Jolyon, and by college photographs—­of young men, live young men, a little heroic, and to be compared with her memories of Val.  Jolyon also scrutinised with care that evidence of his boy’s character and tastes.