ere, Blake," he said--and both of them realised that it was the
first time he had used that surname; Jeff had always been a boy to
him--"it's very unwise of you to come back here at all."

"Very unwise?" Jeff repeated, in an unmixed amazement, "to come back to
Addington? My father's here."

"Your father needn't have been here," pursued Reardon doggedly. Entered
upon what seemed a remonstrance somebody ought to make, he was
committed, he thought, to going on. "It was an exceedingly ill-judged
move for you all, very ill-judged indeed."

Jeff sat looking at him from a sternness that made a definite setting
for the picture of his wonder. Yet he seemed bent only upon
understanding.

"I don't say you came back to make trouble," Reardon went on, pursued
now by the irritated certainty that he had adopted a course and had got
to justify it. "But you're making it."

"How am I making it?"

"Why, you're making her damned uncomfortable."

"Who?"

Reardon had boggled over the name. He hardly liked to say Esther again,
since it had been ill-received, and he certainly wouldn't say "your
wife". But he had to choose and did it at a jump.

"Esther," he said, fixing upon that as the least offensive to himself.

"How am I making my wife uncomfortable?" Jeff inquired.

"Why, here you are," Reardon blundered, "almost within a stone's throw.
She can't even go into the street without running a chance of meeting
you."

Jeff threw back his head and laughed.

"No," he said, "she can't, that's a fact. She can't go into the street
without running the risk of meeting me. But if you hadn't told me,
Reardon, I give you my word I shouldn't have thought of the risk she
runs. No, I shouldn't have thought of it."

Reardon drew a long breath. He had, it seemed to him, after all done
wisely. The note of human brotherhood came back into his voice, even an
implication that presently it might be actually soothing.

"Well, now you do see, you'll agree with me. You can't annoy a woman.
You can't keep her in a state of apprehension."

Jeff had risen, and Reardon, too, got on his feet. Jeff seemed to be
considering, and very gravely, and Reardon, frowning, watched him.

"No," said Jeff. "No. Certainly you can't annoy a woman." He turned upon
Reardon, but with no suggestion of resentment. "What makes you think I
should annoy her?"

"Why, it isn't what you'd wilfully do." Now that the danger of violence
was over, Reardon felt that he could meet