that the girl was preoccupied with something other than
her old wish to aid and satisfy him, that she had a new life of her own
alien to, and in some respects irreconcilable with, the existence
in which he desired to confirm her. There was no renewal of open
disagreement, but their conversations frequently ended by tacit mutual
consent, at a point which threatened divergence; and in Yule's case
every such warning was a cause of intense irritation. He feared to
provoke Marian, and this fear was again a torture to his pride.

Beyond the fact that his daughter was in constant communication with
the Miss Milvains, he knew, and could discover, nothing of the terms on
which she stood with the girls' brother, and this ignorance was harder
to bear than full assurance of a disagreeable fact would have been. That
a man like Jasper Milvain, whose name was every now and then forced
upon his notice as a rising periodicalist and a faithful henchman of
the unspeakable Fadge--that a young fellow of such excellent prospects
should seriously attach himself to a girl like Marian seemed to him
highly improbable, save, indeed, for the one consideration, that
Milvain, who assuredly had a very keen eye to chances, might regard the
girl as a niece of old John Yule, and therefore worth holding in view
until it was decided whether or not she would benefit by her uncle's
decease. Fixed in his antipathy to the young man, he would not allow
himself to admit any but a base motive on Milvain's side, if, indeed,
Marian and Jasper were more to each other than slight acquaintances; and
he persuaded himself that anxiety for the girl's welfare was at least
as strong a motive with him as mere prejudice against the ally of Fadge,
and, it might be, the reviewer of 'English Prose.' Milvain was quite
capable of playing fast and loose with a girl, and Marian, owing to the
peculiar circumstances of her position, would easily be misled by the
pretence of a clever speculator.

That she had never spoken again about the review in The Current might
receive several explanations. Perhaps she had not been able to convince
herself either for or against Milvain's authorship; perhaps she had
reason to suspect that the young man was the author; perhaps she merely
shrank from reviving a discussion in which she might betray what she
desired to keep secret. This last was the truth. Finding that her father
did not recur to the subject, Marian concluded that he had found himself