John Galsworthy

In Chancery John Galsworthy

Separated from his wife Irene for some years now, Soames Forsyte has resigned himself to the fact that she's never coming back. But as he grows older and richer, he yearns for an heir. When he confronts Irene, the raw wounds of his past passion are exposed and he will do anything to claim back what is his. Then his cousin Jolyon Forsyte moves in to protect and champion Irene and the old rift in the family splinters into new jealousy, hatred, and fear. But this time it runs too deeply for forgiveness. In the last day of May in the early 'nineties, about six o'clock of the evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below the terrace of his house at Robin Hill. He was waiting for the midges to bite him, before abandoning the glory of the afternoon. His thin brown hand, where blue veins stood out, held the end of a cigar in its tapering, long-nailed fingers-a pointed polished nail had survived with him from those earlier Victorian days when to touch nothing, even with the tips of the fingers, had been so distinguished.