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.

It was difficult to refuse! But why give the thing to him to do? That
was surely quite unbecoming; but so long as a Forsyte got what he was
after, he was not too particular about the means, provided appearances
were saved.

How should he set about it, or how refuse? Both seemed impossible. So,
young Jolyon!

He arrived at the Club at three o'clock, and the first person he saw was
Bosinney himself, seated in a corner, staring out of the window.

Young Jolyon sat down not far off, and began nervously to reconsider his
position. He looked covertly at Bosinney sitting there unconscious. He
did not know him very well, and studied him attentively for perhaps the
first time; an unusual looking