nowadays? And Soames, secretly convinced that they were not, passed his curved hand over his face vigorously, till itreached the comfort of his chin. Thanks to abstemious habits, he had not grown fat and flabby; his nose was pale and thin,his grey moustache close-clipped, his eyesight unimpaired. A slight stoop closened and corrected the expansion given to hisface by the heightening of his forehead in the recession of his grey hair. Little change had Time wrought in the “warmest”of the young Forsytes, as the last of the old Forsytes — Timothy — now in his hundred and first year, would have phrasedit.

The shade from the plane-trees fell on his neat Homburg hat; he had given up top hats — it was no use attractingattention to wealth in days like these. Plane-trees! His thoughts travelled sharply to Madrid — the Easter before the War,when, having to make up his mind about that Goya picture, he had taken a voyage of discovery to study the painter on hisspot. The fellow had impressed him — great range, real genius! Highly as the chap ranked, he would rank even higher beforethey had finished with him. The second Goya craze would be greater even than the first; oh, yes! And he had bought. On thatvisit he had — as never before — commissioned a copy of a fresco painting called “La Vendimia,” wherein was the figure of agirl with an arm akimbo, who had reminded him of his daughter. He had it now in the Gallery at Mapledurham, and rather poorit was — you couldn’t copy Goya. He would still look at it, however, if his daughter were not there, for the sake ofsomething irresistibly reminiscent in the light, erect balance of the figure, the width between the arching eyebrows, theeager dreaming of the dark eyes. Curious that Fleur should have dark eyes, when his own were grey — no pure Forsyte hadbrown eyes — and her mother’s blue! But of course her grandmother Lamotte’s eyes were dark as treacle!