When John asked if the book had given her amusement, she said that reading made her eyes ache.  He noticed that her hand felt feverish, and that the dark mood had fallen upon her as badly as ever to-night.

‘It’s just what I said,’ she exclaimed with abruptness, after long refusal to speak.  ’I knew your friend would never come as long as I was here.’

John regarded her anxiously.  The phrase ‘your friend’ had a peculiar sound that disturbed him.  It made him aware that she had been thinking often of Sidney Kirkwood since his name had been dismissed from their conversation.  He, too, had often turned his mind uneasily in the same direction, wondering whether he ought to have spoken of Sidney so freely.  At the time it seemed best, indeed almost inevitable; but habit and the force of affection were changing his view of Clara in several respects.  He recognised the impossibility of her continuing to live as now, yet it was as difficult as ever to conceive a means of aiding her.  Unavoidably he kept glancing towards Kirkwood.  He knew that Sidney was no longer a free man; he knew that, even had it been otherwise, Clara could be nothing to him.  In spite of facts, the father kept brooding on what might have been.  His own love was perdurable; how could it other than intensify when its object was so unhappy?  His hot, illogical mood all but brought about a revival of the old resentment against Sidney.

‘I haven’t seen him for a week or two,’ he replied, in an embarrassed way.

‘Did he tell you be shouldn’t come?’

’No.  After we’d talked about it, you know—­when you told me you didn’t mind—­I just said a word or two; and he nodded, that was all.’

She became silent.  John. racked by doubts as to whether he should say more of Sidney or still hold his peace, sat rubbing the back of one hand with the other and looking about the room.

‘Father,’ Clara resumed presently, ’what became of that child at Mrs. Peckover’s, that her grandfather came and took away?  Snowdon; yes, that was her name; Jane Snowdon.’

‘You remember they went to live with somebody you used to know,’ John replied, with hesitation.  ‘They’re still in the same house.’

’So she’s grown up.  Did you ever hear about that old man having a lot of money?’

’Why, my dear, I never heard nothing but what them Peckovers talked at the time.  But there was a son of his turned up as seemed to have some money.  He married Mrs. Peckover’s daughter.’

Clara expressed surprise.

’A son of his?  Not the girl’s father?

’Yes; her father.  I don’t know nothing about his history.  It’s for him, or partly for him, as I’m workin’ now, Clara.  The firm’s Lake, Snowdon & Go.’

‘Why didn’t you mention it before?’

‘I don’t hardly know, my dear.’

She looked at him, aware that something was being kept back.

‘Tell me about the girl.  What does she do?’