threw him wholly
off his balance, and he could give no weight to any consideration but
the necessity of recovering self-respect. Even the sophistry of that
repeated statement that he had never approached Jane as a lover did not
trouble him in face of the injury to his pride. Every word of Joseph
Snowdon's transparently artful hints was a sting to his sensitiveness;
the sum excited him to loathing. It was as though the corner of a
curtain had been raised, giving him a glimpse of all the vile greed,
the base machination, hovering about this fortune that Jane was to
inherit. Of Scawthorne he knew nothing, but his recollection of the
Peckovers was vivid enough to suggest what part Mrs. Joseph Snowdon was
playing in the present intrigues, and he felt convinced that in the
background were other beasts of prey, watching with keen, envious eyes.
The sudden revelation was a shock from which he would not soon recover;
he seemed to himself to be in a degree contaminated; he questioned his
most secret thoughts again and again, recognizing with torment the
fears which had already bidden him draw back; he desired to purify
himself by some unmistakable action.

That which happened he had anticipated. On receipt of the letter
Michael came to see him; he found the old man waiting in front of the
house when he returned to Red Lion Street after his work. The
conversation that followed was a severe test of Sidney's resolve. Had
Michael disclosed the fact of his private understanding with Jane,
Sidney would probably have yielded; but the old man gave no hint of
what he had done--partly because he found it difficult to make the
admission, partly in consequence of an indecision in his own mind with
regard to the very point at issue. Though agitated by the consciousness
of suffering in store for Jane, his thoughts disturbed by the
derangement of a part of his plan, he did not feel that Sidney's change
of mind gravely affected the plan itself. Age had cooled his blood;
enthusiasm had made personal interests of comparatively small account
to him; he recognised his granddaughter's feeling, but could not
appreciate its intensity, its surpreme significance. When Kirkwood made
a show of explaining himself, saying that he shrank from that form of
responsibility, that such a marriage suggested to him many and
insuperable embarrassments, Michael began to reflect that perchance
this was the just view. With household and family cares, could Jane
devote