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 — thevery 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 hissweet and tentative obstinacy, in the grave and foppishly determined Eustace, there was this same stamp — less meaningfulperhaps, but unmistakable — a sign of something ineradicable in the family soul. At one time or another during theafternoon, all these faces, so dissimilar and so alike, had worn an expression of distrust, the object of which wasundoubtedly the man whose acquaintance they were thus assembled to make. Philip Bosinney was known to be a young man withoutfortune, but Forsyte girls had become engaged to such before, and had actually married them. It was not altogether for thisreason, therefore, that the minds of the Forsytes misgave them. They could not have explained the origin of a misgivingobscured by the mist of family gossip. A story was undoubtedly told that he had paid his duty call to Aunts Ann, Juley, andHester, in a soft grey hat — a soft grey hat, not even a new one — a dusty thing with a shapeless crown. “So, extraordinary,my dear — so odd,” Aunt Hester, passing through the little, dark hall (she was rather short-sighted), had tried to ‘shoo’ itoff a chair, taking it for a strange, disreputable cat — Tommy had such disgraceful friends! She was disturbed when it didnot move.