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. He remarked it distinctly on that evening when he accompanied Amy home from Mrs Yule’s; since then he had allowed his pressing occupations to be an excuse for the paucity of his visits. It seemed to him perfectly intelligible that Reardon, sinking into literary insignificance, should grow cool to a man entering upon a successful career; the vein of cynicism in Jasper enabled him to pardon a weakness of this kind, which in some measure flattered him. But he both liked and respected Reardon, and at present he was in the mood to give expression to his warmer feelings.
‘Your book is announced, I see,’ he said with an accent of pleasure, as soon as he had seated himself.
‘I didn’t know it.’
‘Yes. “New novel by the author of ‘On Neutral Ground.’” Down for the sixteenth of April. And I have a proposal to make about it. Will you let me ask Fadge to have it noticed in “Books of the Month,” in the May Current?’
‘I strongly advise you to let it take its chance. The book isn’t worth special notice, and whoever undertook to review it for Fadge would either have to lie, or stultify the magazine.’
Jasper turned to Amy.
‘Now what is to be done with a man like this? What is one to say to him, Mrs Reardon?’
‘Edwin dislikes the book,’ Amy replied, carelessly.
‘That has nothing to do with the matter. We know quite well that in anything he writes there’ll be something for a well-disposed reviewer to make a good deal of. If Fadge will let me, I should do the thing myself.’