The Man of Property Part II Chapter XIII - Perfection Of The House

In which the Forsytes lunch at a simple City eating-house leads to uneasy intimations about Irene’s reticence and estrangement, while the shadows of domestic tensions lengthen beneath the surface of a newly completed country house. The precision of property accounts and the inscrutability of a wife’s silence combine to unsettle Soames, whose control over both estate and marriage begins to falter.