‘She told him what passed between us that night,’ Sidney argued inwardly.  But it was not so.  Hewett had merely abandoned himself to an unreasonable resentment.  Notwithstanding his concessions, he blamed Sidney for the girl’s leaving home, and, as his mood grew more irritable, the more hopeless it seemed that Clara would return, he nursed the suspicion of treacherous behaviour on Sidney’s part.  He would not take into account any such thing as pride which could forbid the young man to urge a rejected suit.  Sidney had grown tired of Clara, that was the truth, and gladly caught at any means of excusing himself.  He had made new friends.  Mrs. Peckover reported that he was a constant visitor at the old man Snowdon’s lodgings; she expressed her belief that Snowdon had come back from Australia with a little store of money, and if Kirkwood had knowledge of that, would it not explain his interest in Jane Snowdon?

‘For shame to listen to such things!’ cried Mrs. Hewett angrily, when her husband once repeated the landlady’s words, ’I’d be ashamed of myself, John!  If you don’t know him no better than that, you ought to by this time.’

And John did, in fact, take to himself no little shame, but his unsatisfied affection turned all the old feelings to bitterness.  In spite of himself, he blundered along the path of perversity.  Sidney, too, had his promptings of obstinate humour.  When he distinctly recognised Hewett’s feeling it galled him; he was being treated with gross injustice, and temper suggested reprisals which could answer no purpose but to torment him with self-condemnation.  However, he must needs consult his own dignity; he could not keep defending himself against ignoble charges.  For the present, there was no choice but to accept John’s hints, and hold apart as much as was possible without absolute breach of friendly relations.  Nor could he bring himself to approach Clara.  It was often in his mind to write to her; had he obeyed the voice of his desire he would have penned such letters as only the self-abasement of a passionate lover can dictate.  But herein, too, the strain of sternness that marked his character made its influence felt.  He said to himself that the only hope of Clara’s respecting him lay in his preservation of the attitude he had adopted, and as the months went on he found a bitter satisfaction in adhering so firmly to his purpose.  The self-flattery with which no man can dispense whispered assurance that Clara only thought the more of him the longer he held aloof.  When the end of July came, he definitely prescribed to his patience a trial of yet one more month.  Then he would write Clara a long letter, telling her what it had cost him to keep silence, and declaring the constancy he devoted to her.