nough for the purpose before him.
Whether he could persevere with it even to the extent of one volume was
very doubtful. But it should not be said of him that he abandoned his
wife and child to penury without one effort of the kind that Milvain and
Amy herself had recommended.

Writing a page or two of manuscript daily, and with several holocausts
to retard him, he had done nearly a quarter of the story when there came
a note from Jasper telling of Mrs Milvain's death. He handed it across
the breakfast-table to Amy, and watched her as she read it.

'I suppose it doesn't alter his position,' Amy remarked, without much
interest.

'I suppose not appreciably. He told me once his mother had a sufficient
income; but whatever she leaves will go to his sisters, I should think.
He has never said much to me.'

Nearly three weeks passed before they heard anything more from Jasper
himself; then he wrote, again from the country, saying that he purposed
bringing his sisters to live in London. Another week, and one evening he
appeared at the door.

A want of heartiness in Reardon's reception of him might have been
explained as gravity natural under the circumstances. But Jasper had
before this become conscious that he was not welcomed here quite so
cheerily as in the old days. He remarked it distinctly on that evening
when he accompanied Amy home from Mrs Yule's; since then he had allowed
his pressing occupations to be an excuse for the paucity of his visits.
It seemed to him perfectly intelligible that Reardon, sinking into
literary insignificance, should grow cool to a man entering upon a
successful career; the vein of cynicism in Jasper enabled him to pardon
a weakness of this kind, which in some measure flattered him. But he
both liked and respected Reardon, and at present he was in the mood to
give expression to his warmer feelings.

'Your book is announced, I see,' he said with an accent of pleasure, as
soon as he had seated himself.

'I didn't know it.'

'Yes. "New novel by the author of 'On Neutral Ground.'" Down for the
sixteenth of April. And I have a proposal to make about it. Will you
let me ask Fadge to have it noticed in "Books of the Month," in the May
Current?'

'I strongly advise you to let it take its chance. The book isn't worth
special notice, and whoever undertook to review it for Fadge would
either have to lie, or stultify the magazine.'

Jasper turned to Amy.

'Now what is to be done with a man li