a little packet and laid it on the table.
Carefully undoing it, he revealed a lady's handkerchief, pinned through
the folds with a pin of discoloured Venetian gold, the stone of which had
fallen from the socket. A scent of dried violets rose to young Jolyon's
nostrils.

"Found in his breast pocket," said the Inspector; "the name has been cut
away!"

Young Jolyon with difficulty answered: "I'm afraid I cannot help you!"
But vividly there rose before him the face he had seen light up, so
tremulous and glad, at Bosinney's coming! Of her he thought more than of
his own daughter, more than of them all--of her with the dark, soft
glance, the delicate passive face, waiting for the dead man, waiting even
at that moment, perhaps, still and patient in the sunlight.

He walked sorrowfully away from the hospital towards his father's house,
reflecting that this death would break up the Forsyte family. The stroke
had indeed slipped past their defences into the very wood of their tree.
They might flourish to all appearance as before, preserving a brave show
before the eyes of London, but the trunk was dead, withered by the same
flash that had stricken down Bosinney. And now the saplings would take
its place, each one a new custodian of the sense of property.

Good forest of Forsytes! thought young Jolyon--soundest timber of our
land!

Concerning the cause of this death--his family would doubtless reject
with vigour the suspicion of suicide, which was so compromising! They
would take it as an accident, a stroke of fate. In their hearts they
would even feel it an intervention of Providence, a retribution--had not
Bosinney endangered their two most priceless possessions, the pocket and
the hearth? And they would talk of 'that unfortunate accident of young
Bosinney's,' but perhaps they would not talk--silence might be better!

As for himself, he regarded the bus-driver's account of the accident as
of very little value. For no one so madly in love committed suicide for
want of money; nor was Bosinney the sort of fellow to set much store by a
financial crisis. And so he too rejected this theory of suicide, the
dead man's face rose too clearly before him. Gone in the heyday of his
summer--and to believe thus that an accident had cut Bosinney off in the
full sweep of his passion was more than ever pitiful to young Jolyon.

Then came a vision of Soames' home as it now was, and must be hereafter.
The streak of lightning had fla