Their residences, placed at stated intervals round the park, watched
like sentinels, lest the fair heart of this London, where their desires
were fixed, should slip from their clutches, and leave them lower in
their own estimations.

There was old Jolyon in Stanhope Place; the Jameses in Park Lane;
Swithin in the lonely glory of orange and blue chambers in Hyde Park
Mansions--he had never married, not he--the Soamses in their nest off
Knightsbridge; the Rogers in Prince's Gardens (Roger was that remarkable
Forsyte who had conceived and carried out the notion of bringing up his
four sons to a new profession. "Collect house property, nothing like
it," he would say; "I never did anything else").

The Haymans again--Mrs. Hayman was the one married Forsyte sister--in a
house high up on Campden Hill, shaped like a giraffe, and so tall that
it gave the observer a crick in the neck; the Nicholases in Ladbroke
Grove, a spacious abode and a great bargain; and last, but not least,
Timothy's on the Bayswater Road, where Ann, and Juley, and Hester, lived
under his protection.

But all this time James was musing, and now he inquired of his host
and brother what he had given for that house in Montpellier Square. He
himself had had his eye on a house there for the last two years, but
they wanted such a price.

Old Jolyon recounted the details of his purchase.

"Twenty-two years to run?" repeated James; "The very house I was
after--you've given too much for it!"