With the merely base motives
which led him to seek her affection and put him at secret hostility
with Sidney Kirkwood, there mingled before long a strain of feeling
which was natural and pure; he became a little jealous of his father
and of Sidney on other grounds than those of self-interest.
Intolerable as his home was, no wonder that he found it a pleasant
relief to spend an evening in Hanover Street; he never came away
without railing at himself for his imbecility in having married
Clem. For the present he had to plot with his wife and Mrs.
Peckover, but only let the chance for plotting _against_ them offer
itself! The opportunity might come. In the meantime, the great thing
was to postpone the marriage--he had no doubt it was contemplated--between
Jane and Sidney. That would be little less than a
fatality.
The week that Jane spent in Essex was of course a time of desperate
anxiety with Joseph; immediately on her return he hastened to assure
himself that things remained as before. It seemed to him that Jane's
greeting had more warmth than she was wont to display when they met;
sundry other little changes in her demeanour struck him at the same
interview, and he was rather surprised that she had not so much
blitheness as before she went away.
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