Indulgence of his passion was making a madman of him.  Never till now had he uttered an unfeeling word to his wife, but the look with which lie accompanied this brutal speech was one of fiery hatred.

‘Don’t turn on her!’ cried Sidney, with bitterness.  ’Say what you like to me, and believe the worst you can of me; I shouldn’t have come here if I hadn’t been ready to bear everything.  It’s no good speaking reason to you now, but maybe you’ll understand some day.’

‘Who know’s as she’s come to harm?’ urged Mrs. Hewett.  ’Nobody can say it of her for certain, yet.’

’I’d have told him that, if he’d only listened to me and given me credit for honesty,’ said Kirkwood.  ’It is as likely as not she’s gone away just because I angered her on Saturday.  Perhaps she said to herself she’d have done with me once for all.  It would be just her way.’

‘Speak another word against my girl,’ Hewett shouted, misinterpreting the last phrase, ‘an’ I’ll do more than say what I think of you—­old man though they call me!  Take yourself out of this room; it was the worst day of my life that ever you came into it.  Never let me an’ you come across each other again.  I hate the sight of you, an’ I hate the sound of your voice!’

The animal in Sidney Kirkwood made it a terrible minute for him as he turned away in silence before this savage injustice.  The veins upon his forehead were swollen; his clenched teeth gave an appearance of ferocity to his spirited features.  With head bent, and shoulders quivering as if in supreme muscular exertion, he left the room without another word.

In a few minutes Hewett also quitted the house.  He went to the luncheon-bar in Upper Street, and heard for the first time Mrs. Tubbs’s rancorous surmises.  He went to Clara’s recent lodgings; a girl of ten was the only person in the house, and she could say nothing more than that Miss Hewett no longer lived there.  Till midway in the afternoon John walked about the streets of Islington, Highbury, Hoxton, Clerkenwell, impelled by the unreasoning hope that he might see Clara, but also because he could not rest in any place.  He was half-conscious now of the madness of his behaviour to Kirkwood, but this only confirmed him in hostility to the young man; the thought of losing Clara was anguish intolerable, yet with it mingled a bitter resentment of the girl’s cruelty to him.  And all these sources of misery swelled the current of rebellious feeling which had so often threatened to sweep his life into wreckage.  He was Clara’s father, and the same impulse of furious revolt which had driven the girl to recklessness now inflamed him with the rage of despair.