 these summer months Sidney Kirkwood's visits to the house in Clerkenwell
Close were comparatively rare. It was not his own wish to relax in any degree
the close friendship so long subsisting between the Hewetts and himself, but
from the day of Clara's engagement with Mrs. Tubbs John Hewett began to alter in
his treatment of him. At first there was nothing more than found its natural
explanation in regret of what had happened, a tendency to muteness, to troubled
brooding; but before long John made it unmistakable that the young man's
presence was irksome to him. If, on coming home, he found Sidney with Mrs.
Hewett and the children, a cold nod was the only greeting he offered; then
followed signs of ill-humour, such as Sidney could not in the end fail to
interpret as unfavourable to himself. He never heard Clara's name on her
father's lips, and himself never uttered it when John was in hearing.
    »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,
