Soames, paying one of his Sunday visits to Timothy’s⁠—paying it with the feeling that after the suit came on he would be paying no more⁠—felt knowledge in the air as he came in. Nobody, of course, dared speak of it before him, but each of the four other Forsytes present held their breath, aware that nothing could prevent Aunt Juley from making them all uncomfortable. She looked so piteously at Soames, she checked herself on the point of speech so often, that Aunt Hester excused herself and said she must go and bathe Timothy’s eye⁠—he had a sty coming. Soames, impassive, slightly supercilious, did not stay long. He went out with a curse stifled behind his pale, just smiling lips.

Fortunately for the peace of his mind, cruelly tortured by the coming scandal, he was kept busy day and night with plans for his retirement⁠—for he had come to that grim conclusion. To go on seeing all those people who had known him as a “long-headed chap,” an astute adviser⁠—after that