CHAPTER II--OLD JOLYON GOES TO THE OPERA

At five o'clock the following day old Jolyon sat alone, a cigar between
his lips, and on a table by his side a cup of tea. He was tired, and
before he had finished his cigar he fell asleep. A fly settled on his
hair, his breathing sounded heavy in the drowsy silence, his upper lip
under the white moustache puffed in and out. From between the fingers
of his veined and wrinkled hand the cigar, dropping on the empty hearth,
burned itself out.

The gloomy little study, with windows of stained glass to exclude the
view, was full of dark green velvet and heavily-carved mahogany--a suite
of which old Jolyon was wont to say: 'Shouldn't wonder if it made a big
price some day!'

It was pleasant to think that in the after life he could get more for
things than he had given.

In the rich brown atmosphere peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of
a Forsyte, the Rembrandtesque effect of his great head, with its white
hair, against the cushion of his high-backed seat, was spoiled by the
moustache, which imparted a somewhat military look to his face. An old
clock that had been with him since before his marriage forty years ago
kept with its ticking a jealous record of the seconds slipping away
forever from its old master.

He had never cared for this room, hardly going into it from one year's