Nothing, however, could have detached John’s mind so completely from its habits of tumult, nor have fixed it so firmly upon the interests of home, as his recovery of his daughter.  From the day of Clara’s establishment under his roof he thought of her, and of her only.  Whilst working at the filter-factory he remained in imagination by her side, ceaselessly repeating her words of the night before, eagerly looking for the hour that would allow him to return to her.  Joy and trouble mingled in an indescribable way to constitute his ordinary mood; one moment he would laugh at a thought, and before a companion could glance at him his gladness would be overshadowed as if with the heaviest anxiety.  Men who saw him day after day said at this time that he seemed to be growing childish; he muttered to himself a good deal, and looked blankly at you when you addressed him.  In the course of a fortnight his state became more settled, but it was not the cheerful impulse that predominated.  Out of the multitude of thoughts concerning Clara, one had fixed itself as the main controller of his reflection.  Characteristically, John hit upon what seemed an irremediable misfortune, and brooded over it with all his might.  If only Sidney Kirkwood were in the same mind as four years ago!

And now was he to believe that what he had been told about Sidney and Jane Snowdon was misleading?  Was the impossible no longer so?  He almost leapt from his chair when he heard that Sidney was the visitor with whom his daughter had been having her private conversation.  How came they to make this appointment?  There was something in Clara’s voice that set his nerves a-tremble.  That night he could not sleep, and next morning he went to work with a senile quiver in his body.  For the first time for more than two months he turned into a public-house on his way, just to give himself a little ‘tone.’  The natural result of such a tonic was to heighten the fever of his imagination; goodness knows how far he had got in a drama of happiness before he threw off his coat and settled to his day’s labour.

Clara, in the meanwhile, suffered a corresponding agitation, more penetrative in proportion to the finer substance of her nature.  She did not know until the scene was over how much vital force it had cost her; when she took off the veil a fire danced before her eyes, and her limbs ached and trembled as she lay down in the darkness.  All night long she was acting her part over and over; when she woke up, it was always at the point where Sidney replied to her, ’But you are mistaken!’

Acting her part; yes, but a few hours had turned the make-believe into something earnest enough.  She could not now have met Kirkwood with the self-possession of last evening.  The fever that then sustained her was much the same as she used to know before she had thoroughly accustomed herself to appearing in front of an audience; it exalted all her faculties, gifted her with a remarkable self-consciousness.