he
had a turn for acting; he succeeded in arranging for her instruction,
and a year and a half later she obtained her first engagement at a
theatre in Scotland. The name she adopted was Clara Vale. Joseph
Snowdon saw her once or twice before she left London, and from Grace
Danver he heard that Grace and she had been schoolfellows in
Clerkenwell. These facts revived in his memory when he afterwards heard
Clem speak of Clara Hewett.

Nothing came of the alliance between Polkenhorne and Joseph; when the
latter's money was exhausted, they naturally fell apart. Joseph made a
living in sundry precarious ways, but at length sank into such straits
that he risked the step of going to Clerkenwell Close. Personal
interest in his child he had then none whatever; his short married life
seemed an episode in the remote past, recalled with indifference. But
in spite of his profound selfishness, it was not solely from the
speculative point of view that he regarded Jane, when he had had time
to realise that she was his daughter, and in a measure to appreciate
her character. With the merely base motives which led him to seek her
affection and put him at secret hostility with Sidney Kirkwood, there
mingled before long a strain of feeling which was natural and pure; he
became a little jealous of his father and of Sidney on other grounds
than those of self-interest. Intolerable as his home was, no wonder
that he found it a pleasant relief to spend an evening in Hanover
Street; he never came away without railing at himself for his
imbecility in having married Clem. For the present he had to plot with
his wife and Mrs. Peckover, but only let the chance for plotting
_against_ them offer itself! The opportunity might come. In the
meantime, the great thing was to postpone the marriage--he had no doubt
it was contemplated--between Jane and Sidney. That would be little less
than a fatality.

The week that Jane spent in Essex was of course a time of desperate
anxiety with Joseph; immediately on her return he hastened to assure
himself that things remained as before. It seemed to him that Jane's
greeting had more warmth than she was wont to display when they met;
sundry other little changes in her demeanour struck him at the same
interview, and he was rather surprised that she had not so much
blitheness as before she went away. But his speculation on minutiae
such as these was suddenly interrupted a day or two later by news which
threw him into a