Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. II, 1889.djvu/109

 “And how will all this affect Jane?” he asked involuntarily.

“That is what I cannot tell,” replied Michael. “It troubles me. My son is a stranger; all these years have made him quite a different man from what I remember; and the worst is, I can no longer trust myself to judge him. Yet I must know the truth;—Sidney, I must know the truth. It’s hard to speak ill of the only son left to me out of the four I once had, but if I think of him as he was seventeen years ago—no, no, he must have changed as he has grown older. But you must help me to know him, Sidney.”

And in a very few days Sidney had his first opportunity of observing Jane’s father. At this meeting Joseph seemed to desire nothing so much as to recommend himself by an amiable bearing. Impossible to speak with more engaging frankness than he did whilst strolling away from Hanover Street in Sidney’s company. Thereafter the two saw a great deal of each other. Joseph was soon a familiar visitor in Tysoe Street; he would come about