e to her suggestion. 'If
he has any serious thoughts, well, let him go on and wait for
opportunities.'

'It's a great pity, isn't it, that she can't see more people--of the
right kind?'

'No use talking about it. Things are as they are. I can't see that her
life is unhappy.'

'It isn't very happy.'

'You think not?'

'I'm sure it isn't.'

'If I get The Study things may be different. Though--But it's no use
talking about what can't be helped. Now don't you go encouraging her
to think herself lonely, and so on. It's best for her to keep close to
work, I'm sure of that.'

'Perhaps it is.'

'I'll think it over.'

Mrs Yule silently left the room, and went back to her sewing.

She had understood that 'Though--' and the 'what can't be helped.' Such
allusions reminded her of a time unhappier than the present, when she
had been wont to hear plainer language. She knew too well that, had she
been a woman of education, her daughter would not now be suffering from
loneliness.

It was her own choice that she did not go with her husband and Marian to
John Yule's. She made an excuse that the house could not be left to
one servant; but in any case she would have remained at home, for her
presence must needs be an embarrassment both to father and daughter.
Alfred was always ashamed of her before strangers; he could not conceal
his feeling, either from her or from other people who had reason for
observing him. Marian was not perhaps ashamed, but such companionship
put restraint upon her freedom. And would it not always be the same?
Supposing Mr Milvain were to come to this house, would it not repel him
when he found what sort of person Marian's mother was?

She shed a few tears over her needlework.

At midnight the study door opened. Yule came to the dining-room to see
that all was right, and it surprised him to find his wife still sitting
there.

'Why are you so late?'

'I've forgot the time.'

'Forgotten, forgotten. Don't go back to that kind of language again.
Come, put the light out.'

PART TWO

CHAPTER VIII. TO THE WINNING SIDE

Of the acquaintances Yule had retained from his earlier years several
were in the well-defined category of men with unpresentable wives. There
was Hinks, for instance, whom, though in anger he spoke of him as a
bore, Alfred held in some genuine regard. Hinks made perhaps a hundred a
year out of a kind of writing which only certain publishers can get rid
of and of this in