Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. II, 1889.djvu/126

 wouldn’t leave him! Mr. Kirkwood, you don’t think my father will give us any trouble?”

She revealed an anxiety which delicacy of feeling had hitherto prevented her expressing. Sidney at once spoke reassuringly, though he had in fact no little suspicion of Joseph Snowdon’s tactics.

“It’s my grandfather that I ought to think most of,” pursued Jane earnestly. “I can’t feel to my father as I do to him. What should I have been now if”

Something caused her to leave the speech unfinished, and for a few moments there was silence. From the ground exhaled a sweet fresh odour, soothing to the senses, and at times a breath of air brought subtler perfume from the alleys of the garden. In the branches above them rustled a bird’s wing. At a distance on the country road sounded the trotting of a horse.

“I feel ashamed and angry with myself,” said Sidney, in a tone of emotion, “when I think now of those times. I might have