He walked sorrowfully away from the hospital towards his father’s house, reflecting that this death would break up the Forsyte family. The stroke had indeed slipped past their defences into the very wood of their tree. They might flourish to all appearance as before, preserving a brave show before the eyes of London, but the trunk was dead, withered by the same flash that had stricken down Bosinney. And now the saplings would take its place, each one a new custodian of the sense of property.

Good forest of Forsytes! thought young Jolyon⁠—soundest timber of our land!

Concerning the cause of this death⁠—his family would doubtless reject with vigour the suspicion of suicide, which was so compromising! They would take it as an accident, a stroke of fate. In their hearts they would even feel it an intervention of Providence, a retribution⁠—had not Bosinney endangered their two most priceless possessions, the pocket and the hearth? And they would talk of “that unfortunate accident of young Bosinney’s,” but perhaps they would not talk⁠—silence might be better!