It is uncertain what Soames expected to get out of this interview.

Apart from that somewhat mysterious awe in which Forsytes in general held old Jolyon, due to his philosophic twist, or perhaps⁠—as Hemmings would doubtless have said⁠—to his chin, there was, and always had been, a subtle antagonism between the younger man and the old. It had lurked under their dry manner of greeting, under their noncommittal allusions to each other, and arose perhaps from old Jolyon’s perception of the quiet tenacity (“obstinacy,” he rather naturally called it) of the young man, of a secret doubt whether he could get his own way with him.