But it should not be said of him that he abandoned his wife and child to penury without one effort of the kind that Milvain and Amy herself had recommended.
Writing a page or two of manuscript daily, and with several holocausts to retard him, he had done nearly a quarter of the story when there came a note from Jasper telling of Mrs Milvain's death.

He handed it across the breakfast-table to Amy, and watched her as she read it.
'I suppose it doesn't alter his position,' Amy remarked, without much interest.
'I suppose not appreciably.

He told me once his mother had a sufficient income; but whatever she leaves will go to his sisters, I should think.
He has never said much to me.' Nearly three weeks passed before they heard anything more from Jasper himself; then he wrote, again from the country, saying that he purposed bringing his sisters to live in London.

Another week, and one evening he appeared at the door.
A want of heartiness in Reardon's reception of him might have been explained as gravity natural under the circumstances.

But Jasper had before this become conscious that he was not welcomed here quite so cheerily as in the old days.