Clara expressed reluctance.

‘I don’t feel hungry, father.  Presently, perhaps.’

‘Well, well; it do want to cool a bit.  Do you feel able to sit up?’

’Yes.  Don’t take so much trouble, father.  I’d rather you left me alone.’

The tone was not exactly impatient; it spoke a weary indifference to everything and every person.

’Yes, I’ll go away, dear.  But you’ll eat just a bit?  If you don’t like this, you must tell me, and I’ll get something you could fancy.’

‘It’ll do well enough.  I’ll eat it presently; I promise you.’

John hesitated before going.

‘Clara—­shall you mind Amy and Annie comin’ to sleep here?  If you’d rather, we’ll manage it somehow else.’

’No.  What does it matter?  They can come when they like, only they mustn’t want me to talk to them.’

He went softly from the room, and joined the children at their tea.  His mood had grown brighter.  Though in talking he kept his tone much softened, there was a smile upon his face, and he answered freely the questions put to him about his journey.  Overcome at first by the dark aspect of this home-coming, he now began to taste the joy of having Clara under his roof, rescued alike from those vague dangers of the past and from the recent peril.  Impossible to separate the sorrow he felt for her blighted life, her broken spirit, and the solace lurking in the thought that henceforth she could not abandon him.  Never a word to reproach her for the unalterable; it should be as though there were no gap between the old love and its renewal in the present.  For Clara used to love him, and already she had shown that his tenderness did not appeal to her in vain; during the journey she had once or twice pressed his hand in gratitude.  How well it was that he had this home in which to receive her!  Half a year ago, and what should he have done?  He would not admit to himself that there were any difficulties ahead; if it came to that, he would manage to get some extra work in the evening and on Saturday afternoons.  He would take Sidney into council.  But thereupon his face darkened again, and he lost himself in troubled musing.

Midway in the Sunday morning Amy told him that Clara had risen and would like him to go and sit with her.  She would not leave her room; Amy had put it in order, and the blind was drawn low.  Clara sat by the fireside, in her attitude of last night, hiding her face as far as she was able.  The beauty of her form would have impressed anyone who approached her, the grace of her bent head; but the countenance was no longer that of Clara Hewett; none must now look at her, unless to pity.  Feeling herself thus utterly changed, she could not speak in her former natural voice; her utterance was oppressed, unmusical, monotonous.

When her father had taken a place near her she asked him, ’Have you got that piece of newspaper still?’

He had, and at her wish produced it.  Clara held it in the light of the fire, and regarded the pencilled words closely.  Then she inquired if he wished to keep it, and on his answering in the negative threw it to be burnt.  Hewett took her hand, and for a while they kept silence.