The conflict between desire and scruple made every day a weariness.  Instead of looking forward eagerly to the evening in the week which he spent with Michael and Jane, he dreaded its approach.  Scarcely had he met Jane’s look since this trouble began; he knew that her voice when she spoke to him expressed consciousness of something new in their relations, and even whilst continuing to act his part he suffered ceaselessly.  Had Michael ever repeated to his granddaughter the confession which Sidney would now have given anything to recall?  It was more than possible.  Of Jane’s feeling Sidney could not entertain a serious doubt, and he knew that for a long time he had done his best to encourage it.  It was unpardonable to draw aloof from her just because these circumstances had declared themselves, circumstances which brought perplexity into her life and doubtless made her long for another kind of support than Michael could afford her.  The old man himself appeared to be waiting anxiously; he had fallen back into his habit of long silences, and often regarded Sidney in a way which the latter only too well understood.

He tried to help himself through the time of indecision by saying that there was no hurry.  Jane was very young, and with the new order of things her life had in truth only just begun.  She must have a space to look about her; all the better if she could form various acquaintances.  On that account he urged so strongly that she should be brought into relation with Miss Lant, and, if possible, with certain of Miss Lant’s friends.  All very well, had not the reasoning been utterly insincere.  It might have applied to another person; in Jane’s case it was mere sophistry.  Her nature was home-keeping; to force her into alliance with conscious philanthropists was to set her in the falsest position conceivable; striving to mould herself to the desires of those she loved, she would suffer patiently and in secret mourn for the time when she had been obscure and happy.  These things Sidney knew with a certainty only less than that wherewith he judged his own sensations; between Jane and himself the sympathy was perfect.  And in despite of scruple he would before long have obeyed the natural impulse of his heart, had it not been that still graver complications declared themselves, and by exasperating his over-sensitive pride made him reckless of the pain he gave to others so long as his own self-torture was made sufficiently acute.

With Joseph Snowdon he was doing his best to be on genial terms, but the task was a hard one.  The more he saw of Joseph, the less he liked him.  Of late the filter manufacturer had begun to strike notes in his conversation which jarred on Sidney’s sensibilities, and made him disagreeably suspicious that something more was meant than Joseph cared to put into plain speech.  Since his establishment in business Joseph had become remarkably attentive to his father; he appeared to enter with much zeal