and see your grandfather.'

Jane rose silently.

'I'll just look in and say good-night before I go,' Sidney added, as he
left the room.

He did so, twenty minutes after. When he opened the door Jane was
sewing busily, but it was only on hearing his footsteps that she had so
applied herself. He gave a friendly nod, and departed.

Still the same change in his manner. A little while ago he would have
chatted freely and forgotten the time.

Another week, and Jane made the acquaintance of the lady whose name we
have once or twice heard, Miss Lant, the friend of old Mr. Percival. Of
middle age and with very plain features, Miss Lant had devoted herself
to philanthropic work; she had an income of a few hundred pounds, and
lived almost as simply as the Snowdons in order to save money for
charitable expenditure. Unfortunately the earlier years of her life had
been joyless, and in the energy which she brought to this self-denying
enterprise there was just a touch of excess, common enough in those who
have been defrauded of their natural satisfactions and find a resource
in altruism. She was no pietist, but there is nowadays coming into
existence a class of persons who substitute for the old religious
acerbity a narrow and oppressive zeal for good works of purely human
sanction, and to this order Miss Lant might be said to belong. However,
nothing but what was agreeable manifested itself in her intercourse
with Michael and Jane; the former found her ardent spirit very
congenial, and the latter was soon at ease in her company.

It was a keen distress to Jane when she heard from Pennyloaf that Bob
would allow no future meetings between them. In vain she sought an
explanation; Pennyloaf professed to know nothing of her husband's
motives, but implored her friend to keep away for a time, as any
disregard of Bob's injunction would only result in worse troubles than
she yet had to endure. Jane sought the aid of Kirkwood, begging him to
interfere with young Hewett; the attempt was made, but proved
fruitless. '_Sic volo, sic jubeo_,' was Bob's standpoint, and he as
good as bade Sidney mind his own affairs.

Jane suffered, and more than she herself would have anticipated. She
had conceived a liking, almost an affection, for poor, shiftless
Pennyloaf, strengthened, of course, by the devotion with which the
latter repaid her. But something more than this injury to her feelings
was involved in her distress on being excluded from those