 that he has begun them again?«
    »No,« said Jermyn, with a very unpleasant sensation.
    »Of course he will now,« said Mrs Transome. »There is no reason in his mind
why he should not.«
    »Has he resolved to risk the estate then?«
    »He feels in no danger on that score. And if there were, the danger doesn't
depend on you. The most likely thing is, that he will marry this girl.«
    »He knows everything then?« said Jermyn, the expression of his face getting
clouded.
    »Everything. It's of no use for you to think of mastering him: you can't do
it. I used to wish Harold to be fortunate - and he is fortunate,« said Mrs
Transome, with intense bitterness. »It's not my star that he inherits.«
    »Do you know how he came by the information about this girl?«
    »No; but she knew it all before we spoke to her. It's no secret.«
    Jermyn was confounded by this hopeless frustration to which he had no key.
Though he thought of Christian, the thought shed no light; but the more fatal
point was clear: he held no secret that could help him.
    »You are aware that these Chancery proceedings may ruin me?«
    »He told me they would. But if you are imagining that I can do anything,
dismiss the notion. I have told him as plainly as I dare that I wish him to drop
all public quarrel with you, and that you could make an arrangement without
scandal. I can do no more. He will not listen to me; he doesn't mind about my
feelings. He cares more for Mr Transome than he does for me. He will not listen
to me any more than if I were an old ballad-singer.«
    »It's very hard on me, I know,« said Jermyn, in the tone with which a man
flings out a reproach.
    »I besought you three months ago to bear anything rather than quarrel with
him.«
    »I have not quarrelled with him. It is he who has been always seeking a
quarrel with me. I have borne a good deal - more than any one else would. He set
his teeth against me from the first.«
    »He saw things that annoyed him; and men are not like women,« said Mrs
Transome. There was a bitter innuendo in that truism.
    »It's very hard on me -
