listener failed to understand him, and looked with her familiar expression of mental effort.
‘We can’t help that,’ he added, with reference 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.’
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