't miss the comfort of home so much. Of course they
will have to go into very modest lodgings indeed. I have already been looking
about. I should like to find rooms for them somewhere near my own place; it's a
decent neighbourhood, and the park is at hand, and then they wouldn't be very
far from you. They thought it might be possible to make a joint establishment
with me, but I'm afraid that's out of the question. The lodgings we should want
in that case, everything considered, would cost more than the sum of our
expenses if we live apart. Besides, there's no harm in saying that I don't think
we should get along very well together. We're all of us rather quarrelsome, to
tell the truth, and we try each other's tempers.«
    Marian smiled and looked puzzled.
    »Shouldn't you have thought that?«
    »I have seen no signs of quarrelsomeness.«
    »I'm not sure that the worst fault is on my side. Why should one condemn
oneself against conscience? Maud is perhaps the hardest to get along with. She
has a sort of arrogance, an exaggeration of something I am quite aware of in
myself. You have noticed that trait in me?«
    »Arrogance - I think not. You have self-confidence.«
    »Which goes into extremes now and then. But, putting myself aside, I feel
pretty sure that the girls won't seem quarrelsome to you; they would have to be
very fractious indeed before that were possible.«
    »We shall continue to be friends, I am sure.«
    Jasper let his eyes wander about the room.
    »This is your father's study?«
    »Yes.«
    »Perhaps it would have seemed odd to Mr Yule if I had come in and begun to
talk to him about these purely private affairs. He knows me so very slightly.
But, in calling here for the first time -«
    An unusual embarrassment checked him.
    »I will explain to father your very natural wish to speak of these things,«
said Marian, with tact.
    She thought uneasily of her mother in the next room. To her there appeared
no reason whatever why Jasper should not be introduced to Mrs Yule, yet she
could not venture to propose it. Remembering her father's last remarks about
Milvain in connection with Fadge's magazine, she must wait for distinct
permission before offering the young man encouragement to repeat his visit.
Perhaps there was complicated
