That Sidney could send this letter, after keeping it in reserve for a couple of days, proved how profoundly his instincts were revolted by the difficulties and the ambiguity of his position.  It had been bad enough when only his own conscience was in play; the dialogue with Joseph, following upon Bessie Byass’s indiscretion, threw him wholly off his balance, and he could give no weight to any consideration but the necessity of recovering self-respect.  Even the sophistry of that repeated statement that he had never approached Jane as a lover did not trouble him in face of the injury to his pride.  Every word of Joseph Snowdon’s transparently artful hints was a sting to his sensitiveness; the sum excited him to loathing.  It was as though the corner of a curtain had been raised, giving him a glimpse of all the vile greed, the base machination, hovering about this fortune that Jane was to inherit.  Of Scawthorne he knew nothing, but his recollection of the Peckovers was vivid enough to suggest what part Mrs. Joseph Snowdon was playing in the present intrigues, and he felt convinced that in the background were other beasts of prey, watching with keen, envious eyes.  The sudden revelation was a shock from which he would not soon recover; he seemed to himself to be in a degree contaminated; he questioned his most secret thoughts again and again, recognizing with torment the fears which had already bidden him draw back; he desired to purify himself by some unmistakable action.

That which happened he had anticipated.  On receipt of the letter Michael came to see him; he found the old man waiting in front of the house when he returned to Red Lion Street after his work.  The conversation that followed was a severe test of Sidney’s resolve.  Had Michael disclosed the fact of his private understanding with Jane, Sidney would probably have yielded; but the old man gave no hint of what he had done—­partly because he found it difficult to make the admission, partly in consequence of an indecision in his own mind with regard to the very point at issue.  Though agitated by the consciousness of suffering in store for Jane, his thoughts disturbed by the derangement of a part of his plan, he did not feel that Sidney’s change of mind gravely affected the plan itself.  Age had cooled his blood; enthusiasm had made personal interests of comparatively small account to him; he recognised his granddaughter’s feeling, but could not appreciate its intensity, its surpreme significance.  When Kirkwood made a show of explaining himself, saying that he shrank from that form of responsibility, that such a marriage suggested to him many and insuperable embarrassments, Michael began to reflect that perchance this was the just view.  With household and family cares, could Jane devote herself to the great work after the manner of his ideal?  Had he not been tempted by his friendship for Sidney to introduce into his scheme what was really an incompatible element?  Was it not decidedly, infinitely better that Jane should be unmarried?