Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. I, 1889.djvu/78

 gruffly. "Look here, Clara. Sidney's been talkin' to me; he's been sayin' that I ought to let you have your own way in this. Yes, you may well look as if it surprised you." Clara had just glanced at the young man, slightly raising her eyebrows, but at once looked away again with a careless movement of the head. "He says what it's hard an' cruel for me to believe, though I half begin to see that he's right; he says you won't pay no more heed to what I wish, an' it's me now must give way to you. I didn't use to think me an' Clara would come to that; but it looks like it—it looks like it."

The girl stood with downcast eyes. Once more her face had suffered a change; the lips were no longer malignant, her forehead had relaxed from its haughty frown. The past fortnight had been a period of contest between her father's stubborn fears and her own determination to change the mode of her life. Her self-will was only intensified by opposition. John had often enough experienced this, but hitherto the points at