Jane plied her needle, musing.

‘Do you know whether he ever goes to see his father?’ Sidney inquired presently.

‘No, I don’t,’ Jane answered, looking at him, but immediately dropping her eyes.

’If he doesn’t I should think worse of him.  Nobody ever had a kinder father, and there’s many a reason why he should be careful to pay the debt he owes.’

Jane waited a moment, then again raised her eyes to him.  It seemed as though she would ask a question, and Sidney’s grave attentiveness indicated a surmise of what she was about to say.  But her thought remained unuttered, and there was a prolongation of silence.

Of course they were both thinking of Clara.  That name had never been spoken by either of them in the other’s presence, but as often as conversation turned upon the Hewetts, it was impossible for them not to supplement their spoken words by a silent colloquy of which Clara was the subject.  From her grandfather Jane knew that, to this day, nothing had been heard of Hewett’s daughter; what people said at the time of the girl’s disappearance she had learned fully enough from Clem Peckover, who even yet found it pleasant to revive the scandal, and by contemptuous comments revenge herself for Clara’s haughty usage in old days.  Time had not impaired Jane’s vivid recollection of that Bank-holiday morning when she herself was the first to make it known that Clara had gone away.  Many a time since then she had visited the street whither Snowdon led her—­had turned aside from her wonted paths in the thought that it was not impossible she might meet Clara, though whether with more hope or fear of such a meeting she could not have said.  When two years had gone by, her grandfather one day led the talk to that subject; he was then beginning to change in certain respects the tone he had hitherto used with her, and to address her as one who had outgrown childhood.  He explained to her how it came about that Sidney could no longer be even on terms of acquaintance with John Hewett.  The conversation originated in Jane’s bringing the news that Hewett and his family had at length left Mrs. Peckover’s house.  For two years things had gone miserably with them, their only piece of good fortune being the death of the youngest child.  John was confirmed in a habit of drinking.  Not that he had become a brutal sot; sometimes for as much as a month he would keep sober, and even when he gave way to temptation he never behaved with violence to his wife and children.  Still, the character of his life had once more suffered a degradation, and he possessed no friends who could be of the least use to him.  Snowdon, for some reason of his own, maintained a slight intercourse with the Peckovers, and through them he endeavoured to establish an intimacy with Hewett; but the project utterly failed.  Probably on Kirkwood’s account, John met the old man’s advances with something more than coldness.  Sternly he had forbidden his wife and the little ones to exchange a word of any kind with Sidney, or with any friend of his.  He appeared to nourish incessantly the bitter resentment to which he gave expression when Sidney and he last met.