s absurd, she argued, to act as
if the matter were hopeless. Michael Snowdon would certainly leave
Joseph money in his will, if only the right steps were taken to secure
his favour. Instead of quarrelling, they must put their heads together
and scheme. She had her ideas; let them listen to her.

'Clem, you go and get a pot of old six for supper, and don't be such a
---- fool,' was her final remark.

CHAPTER XIX

A RETREAT

Visiting his friends as usual on Sunday evening, Sidney Kirkwood felt,
before he had been many minutes in the room, that something unwonted
was troubling the quiet he always found here. Michael Snowdon was
unlike himself, nervously inattentive, moving frequently, indisposed to
converse on any subject. Neither had Jane her accustomed brightness,
and the frequent glances she east at her grandfather seemed to show
that the latter's condition was causing her anxiety. She withdrew very
early, and, as at once appeared, in order that Sidney might hear in
private what had that day happened. The story of Clem Peckover's
marriage naturally occasioned no little astonishment in Sidney.

'And how will all this affect Jane?' he asked involuntarily.

'That is what I cannot tell,' replied Michael. 'It troubles me. My son
is a stranger; all these years have made him quite a different man from
what I remember; and the worst is, I can no longer trust myself to
judge him. Yet I must know the truth--Sidney, I must know the truth.
It's hard to speak ill of the only son left to me out of the four I
once had, but if I think of him as he was seventeen years ago--no, no,
he must have changed as he has grown older. But you must help me to
know him, Sidney.'

And in a very few days Sidney had his first opportunity of observing
Jane's father. At this meeting Joseph seemed to desire nothing so much
as to recommend himself by an amiable bearing. Impossible to speak with
more engaging frankness than he did whilst strolling away from Hanover
Street in Sidney's company. Thereafter the two saw a great deal of each
other. Joseph was soon a familiar visitor in Tysoe Street; he would
come about nine o'clock of an evening, and sit till after midnight. The
staple of his talk was at first the painfully unnatural relations
existing between his father, his daughter, and himself. He had led a
most unsatisfactory life; he owned it, deplored it. That the old man
should distrust him was but natural; but would not Sidney, as a common