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.

On a Bank-holiday only a few insignificant shops remain open even in
the poor districts of London; sweets you can purchase, and tobacco, but
not much else that is sold across an ordinary counter. The more
noticeable becomes the brisk trade of public-houses. At the gin-shop
centres the life of each street; here is a wide door and a noisy
welcome, the more attractive by contrast with the stretch of closed
shutters on either hand. At such a door, midway in the sultry
afternoon, John Hewett paused. To look at his stooping shoulders, his
uncertain swaying this way and that, his flushed, perspiring face, you
mi