that much for him. An' I
shouldn't have allowed anything but one as was respectable to leave this 'ouse;
I'd sooner a paid money out o' my own pocket. That's always the way with me. Mr.
Willis, he's my undertaker; you'll find him at Number 17 Green Passage. He
buried my 'usband; though that wasn't from the Close; but I never knew a job
turned out more respectable. He was 'ere to-day; we've only just buried my
'usband's mother. That's why I ain't quite myself - see?«
    Mrs. Peckover was not wont to be gossippy. She became so at present, partly
in consequence of the stimulants she had taken to support her through a trying
ceremony, partly as a means of obtaining time to reflect. Jane's unlucky illness
made an especial difficulty in her calculations. She felt that the longer she
delayed mention of the fact, the more likely was she to excite suspicion; on the
other hand, she could not devise the suitable terms in which to reveal it. The
steady gaze of the old man was disconcerting. Not that he searched her face with
a cunning scrutiny, such as her own eyes expressed; she would have found that
less troublesome, as being familiar. The anxiety, the troubled anticipation,
which her words had aroused in him, were wholly free from shadow of ignoble
motive; he was pained, and the frequent turning away of his look betrayed that
part of the feeling was caused by observation of the woman herself, but every
movement visible on his features was subdued by patience and mildness. Suffering
was a life's habit with him, and its fruit in this instance that which (spite of
moral commonplace) it least often bears - self-conquest.
    »You haven't told me yet,« he said, with quiet disregard of her
irrelevancies, »whether or not her father's name was Joseph Snowdon.«
    »There's no call to hide it. That was his name. I've got letters of his
writin'. J. J. Snowdon stands at the end, plain enough. And he was your son, was
he?«
    »He was. But have you any reason to think he's dead?«
    »Dead! I never heard as he was. But then I never heard as he was livin',
neither. When his wife went, poor thing - an' it was a chill on