Mrs. Peckover was not wont to be gossippy.  She became so at present, partly in consequence of the stimulants she had taken to support her through a trying ceremony, partly as a means of obtaining time to reflect.  Jane’s unlucky illness made an especial difficulty in her calculations.  She felt that the longer she delayed mention of the fact, the more likely was she to excite suspicion; on the other hand, she could not devise the suitable terms in which to reveal it.  The steady gaze of the old man was disconcerting.  Not that he searched her face with a cunning scrutiny, such as her own eyes expressed; she would have found that less troublesome, as being familiar.  The anxiety, the troubled anticipation, which her words had aroused in him, were wholly free from shadow of ignoble motive; he was pained, and the frequent turning away of his look betrayed that part of the feeling was caused by observation of the woman herself, but every movement visible on his features was subdued by patience and mildness.  Suffering was a life’s habit with him, and its fruit in this instance that which (spite of moral commonplace) it least often bears—­self-conquest.

‘You haven’t told me yet,’ he said, with quiet disregard of her irrelevancies, ’whether or not her father’s name was Joseph Snowdon.’

’There’s no call to hide it.  That was his name.  I’ve got letters of his writin’.  “J.  J. Snowdon” stands at the end, plain enough.  And he was your son, was he?’

‘He was.  But have you any reason to think he’s dead?’

’Dead!  I never heard as he was.  But then I never heard as he was livin’, neither.  When his wife went, poor thing—­an’ it was a chill on the liver, they said; it took her very sudden—­he says to me, “Mrs. Peckover,” he says, “I know you for a motherly woman”—­ just like that—­see?—­“I know you for a motherly woman,” he says, “an’ the idea I have in my ’ed is as I should like to leave Janey in your care, ’cause,” he says, “I’ve got work in Birmingham, an’ I don’t see how I’m to take her with me.  Understand me?” he says.  “Oh!” I says—­not feelin’ quite sure what I’d ought to do—­ see?  “Oh!” I says.  “Yes,” he says; “an’ between you an’ me,” he says, “there won’t be no misunderstanding.  If you’ll keep Janey with you”—­an’ she was goin’ to school at the time, ’cause she went to the same as my own Clem—­that’s Clemintiner—­understand?—­“if you’ll keep Janey with you,” he says, “for a year, or maybe two years, or maybe three years—­’cause that depends on cirkinstances”—­understand?—­“I’m ready,” he says, “to pay you what it’s right that pay I should, an’ I’m sure,” he says, “as we shouldn’t misunderstand one another.”  Well, of course I had my own girl to bring up, an’ my own son to look after too.  A nice sort o’ son; just when he was beginnin’ to do well, an’ ought to a paid me back for all the expense I was at in puttin’ him to a business, what must he do but take his ‘ook to Australia.’

Her scrutiny discerned something in the listener’s face which led her to ask: