‘I’ll go upstairs, shall I?’

Jane could not overcome her fear; at the door of the bedroom she drew back, involuntarily, that her father might enter before her.  When she forced herself to follow, the first glimpse of the motionless form shook her from head to foot.  The thought of death was dreadful to her, and death seemed to lurk invisibly in this quiet room.  The pale sunlight affected her as a mockery of hope.

‘You won’t go away again, father?’ she whispered.

He shook his head.

In the meantime Bessie and Clem were conversing.  On the single previous occasion of Clem’s visit to the house they had not met.  They examined each other’s looks with curiosity.  Clem wished it were possible to get at the secrets of which Mrs. Byass was doubtless in possession; Bessie on her side was reserved, circumspect.

‘Will he get over it?’ the former inquired, with native brutality.

‘I’m sure I don’t know; I hope he may.’

The medical man arrived, and when he came downstairs again Joseph accompanied him.  Clem, when she found that nothing definite could be learned, and that her husband had no intention of leaving, expressed her wish to walk round to Clerkenwell Close and see her mother.  Joseph approved.

‘You’d better have dinner there,’ he said to her privately.  ’We can’t both of us come down on the Byasses.’

She nodded, and with a parting glance of hostile suspicion set forth.  When she had crossed City Road, Clem’s foot was on her native soil; she bore herself with conscious importance, hoping to meet some acquaintance who would be impressed by her attire and demeanour.  Nothing of the kind happened, however.  It was the dead hour of Sunday morning, midway in service-time, and long before the opening of public-houses.  In the neighbourhood of those places of refreshment were occasionally found small groups of men and boys, standing with their hands in their pockets, dispirited, seldom caring even to smoke; they kicked their heels against the kerbstone and sighed for one o’clock.  Clem went by them with a haughty balance of her head.

As she entered by the open front door and began to descend the kitchen steps, familiar sounds were audible.  Mrs. Peckover’s voice was raised in dispute with some one; it proved to be a quarrel with a female lodger respecting the sum of threepence-farthing, alleged by the landlady to be owing on some account or other.  The two women had already reached the point of calling each other liar and thief.  Clem, having no acquaintance with the lodger, walked into the kitchen with an air of contemptuous indifference.  The quarrel continued for another ten minutes—­if the head of either had been suddenly cut off it would assuredly have gone on railing for an appreciable time—­and Clem waited, sitting before the fire.  At last the lodger had departed, and the last note of her virulence died away.

‘And what do you want?’ asked Mrs. Peckover, turning sharply upon her daughter.