He held himself extremely upright, and his shrewd, steady eyes had lost
none of their clear shining. Thus he gave an impression of superiority
to the doubts and dislikes of smaller men. Having had his own way for
innumerable years, he had earned a prescriptive right to it. It would
never have occurred to old Jolyon that it was necessary to wear a look
of doubt or of defiance.

Between him and the four other brothers who were present, James,
Swithin, Nicholas, and Roger, there was much difference, much
similarity. In turn, each of these four brothers was very different from
the other, yet they, too, were alike.

Through the varying features and expression of those five faces could be
marked a certain steadfastness of chin, underlying surface distinctions,
marking a racial stamp, too prehistoric to trace, too remote and
permanent to discuss--the very hall-mark and guarantee of the family
fortunes.

Among the younger generation, in the tall, bull-like George, in pallid
strenuous Archibald, in young Nicholas with his sweet and tentative
obstinacy, in the grave and foppishly determined Eustace, there was
this same stamp--less meaningful perhaps, but unmistakable--a sign of
something ineradicable in the family soul. At one time or another during
the afternoon, all these faces, so dissimilar and so alike, had worn
an expression of distrust, the object of which was undoubtedly the man
whose acquaintance they were thus assembled to make. Philip Bosinney was
known to be a young man without fortune, but Forsyte girls had become
engaged to such before, and had actually married them. It was not
altogether for this reason, therefore, that the minds of the Forsytes
misgave them. They could not have explained the origin of a misgiving