ation he could no
longer resist his weariness, so he went to bed. Before falling asleep
he heard the two familiar clocks strike eight; this evening they were
in unusual accord, and the querulous notes from the workhouse sounded
between the deeper ones from St Marylebone. Reardon tried to remember
when he had last observed this; the matter seemed to have a peculiar
interest for him, and in dreams he worried himself with a grotesque
speculation thence derived.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE OLD HOME

Before her marriage Mrs Edmund Yule was one of seven motherless sisters
who constituted the family of a dentist slenderly provided in the matter
of income. The pinching and paring which was a chief employment of her
energies in those early days had disagreeable effects upon a character
disposed rather to generosity than the reverse; during her husband's
lifetime she had enjoyed rather too eagerly all the good things which he
put at her command, sometimes forgetting that a wife has duties as
well as claims, and in her widowhood she indulged a pretentiousness
and querulousness which were the natural, but not amiable, results of
suddenly restricted circumstances.

Like the majority of London people, she occupied a house of which the
rent absurdly exceeded the due proportion of her income, a pleasant
foible turned to such good account by London landlords. Whereas she
might have lived with a good deal of modest comfort, her existence was a
perpetual effort to conceal the squalid background of what was meant for
the eyes of her friends and neighbours. She kept only two servants, who
were so ill paid and so relentlessly overworked that it was seldom they
remained with her for more than three months. In dealings with other
people whom she perforce employed, she was often guilty of incredible
meanness; as, for instance, when she obliged her half-starved dressmaker
to purchase material for her, and then postponed payment alike for
that and for the work itself to the last possible moment. This was not
heartlessness in the strict sense of the word; the woman not only knew
that her behaviour was shameful, she was in truth ashamed of it and
sorry for her victims. But life was a battle. She must either crush or
be crushed. With sufficient means, she would have defrauded no one, and
would have behaved generously to many; with barely enough for her needs,
she set her face and defied her feelings, inasmuch as she believed there
was no choice.

S