‘Well, we’ll talk about it another time,’ he said carelessly.  ’I can’t stop long to-night, so I’ll go up and see your grandfather.’

Jane rose silently.

‘I’ll just look in and say good-night before I go,’ Sidney added, as he left the room.

He did so, twenty minutes after.  When he opened the door Jane was sewing busily, but it was only on hearing his footsteps that she had so applied herself.  He gave a friendly nod, and departed.

Still the same change in his manner.  A little while ago he would have chatted freely and forgotten the time.

Another week, and Jane made the acquaintance of the lady whose name we have once or twice heard, Miss Lant, the friend of old Mr. Percival.  Of middle age and with very plain features, Miss Lant had devoted herself to philanthropic work; she had an income of a few hundred pounds, and lived almost as simply as the Snowdons in order to save money for charitable expenditure.  Unfortunately the earlier years of her life had been joyless, and in the energy which she brought to this self-denying enterprise there was just a touch of excess, common enough in those who have been defrauded of their natural satisfactions and find a resource in altruism.  She was no pietist, but there is nowadays coming into existence a class of persons who substitute for the old religious acerbity a narrow and oppressive zeal for good works of purely human sanction, and to this order Miss Lant might be said to belong.  However, nothing but what was agreeable manifested itself in her intercourse with Michael and Jane; the former found her ardent spirit very congenial, and the latter was soon at ease in her company.

It was a keen distress to Jane when she heard from Pennyloaf that Bob would allow no future meetings between them.  In vain she sought an explanation; Pennyloaf professed to know nothing of her husband’s motives, but implored her friend to keep away for a time, as any disregard of Bob’s injunction would only result in worse. troubles than she yet had to endure.  Jane sought the aid of Kirkwood, begging him to interfere with young Hewett; the attempt was made, but proved fruitless. ‘Sic volo, sic jubeo,’ was Bob’s standpoint, and he as good as bade Sidney mind his own affairs.

Jane suffered, and more than she herself would have anticipated.  She had conceived a liking, almost an affection, for poor, shiftless Pennyloaf, strengthened, of course, by the devotion with which the latter repaid her.  But something more than this injury to her feelings was involved in her distress on being excluded from those sorry lodgings.  Pennyloaf was comparatively an old friend; she represented the past, its contented work, its familiar associations, its abundant happiness.  And now, though Jane did not acknowledge to herself that she regretted the old state of things, still less that she feared the future, it was undeniable that the past seemed very bright in her memory, and that something weighed upon her heart, forbidding such gladsomeness as she had known.