ed herself to follow, the first glimpse of the motionless form
shook her from head to foot. The thought of death was dreadful to her,
and death seemed to lurk invisibly in this quiet room. The pale
sunlight affected her as a mockery of hope.

'You won't go away again, father?' she whispered.

He shook his head.

In the meantime Bessie and Clem were conversing. On the single previous
occasion of Clem's visit to the house they had not met. They examined
each other's looks with curiosity. Clem wished it were possible to get
at the secrets of which Mrs. Byass was doubtless in possession; Bessie
on her side was reserved, circumspect.

'Will he get over it?' the former inquired, with native brutality.

'I'm sure I don't know; I hope he may.'

The medical man arrived, and when he came downstairs again Joseph
accompanied him. Clem, when she found that nothing definite could be
learned, and that her husband had no intention of leaving, expressed
her wish to walk round to Clerkenwell Close and see her mother. Joseph
approved.

'You'd better have dinner there,' he said to her privately. 'We can't
both of us come down on the Byasses.'

She nodded, and with a parting glance of hostile suspicion set forth.
When she had crossed City Road, Clem's foot was on her native soil; she
bore herself with conscious importance, hoping to meet some
acquaintance who would be impressed by her attire and demeanour.
Nothing of the kind happened, however. It was the dead hour of Sunday
morning, midway in service-time, and long before the opening of
public-houses. In the neighbourhood of those places of refreshment were
occasionally found small groups of men and boys, standing with their
hands in their pockets, dispirited, seldom caring even to smoke; they
kicked their heels against the kerbstone and sighed for one o'clock.
Clem went by them with a haughty balance of her head.

As she entered by the open front door and began to descend the kitchen
steps, familiar sounds were audible. Mrs. Peckover's voice was raised
in dispute with some one; it proved to be a quarrel with a female
lodger respecting the sum of threepence-farthing, alleged by the
landlady to be owing on some account or other. The two women had
already reached the point of calling each other liar and thief. Clem,
having no acquaintance with the lodger, walked into the kitchen with an
air of contemptuous indifference. The quarrel continued for another ten
minutes--if the head of