For the first time, as a family, they appeared to have an
instinct of being in contact, with some strange and unsafe thing.
Over against the piano a man of bulk and stature was wearing two
waistcoats on his wide chest, two waistcoats and a ruby pin, instead of
the single satin waistcoat and diamond pin of more usual occasions,
and his shaven, square, old face, the colour of pale leather, with
pale eyes, had its most dignified look, above his satin stock. This was
Swithin Forsyte. Close to the window, where he could get more than his
fair share of fresh air, the other twin, James--the fat and the lean of
it, old Jolyon called these brothers--like the bulky Swithin, over six
feet in height, but very lean, as though destined from his birth to
strike a balance and maintain an average, brooded over the scene with
his permanent stoop; his grey eyes had an air of fixed absorption in
some secret worry, broken at intervals by a rapid, shifting scrutiny
of surrounding facts; his cheeks, thinned by two parallel folds, and a
long, clean-shaven upper lip, were framed within Dundreary whiskers. In
his hands he turned and turned a piece of china. Not far off, listening
to a lady in brown, his only son Soames, pale and well-shaved,
dark-haired, rather bald, had poked his chin up sideways, carrying his
nose with that aforesaid appearance of 'sniff,' as though despising an
egg which he knew he could not digest.
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