Mrs Edmund Yule, with her daughter--now Mrs Reardon--had been only once, three years ago.
These two families, as you have heard, were not on terms of amity with each other, owing to difficulties between Mrs Alfred and Mrs Edmund; but John seemed to regard both impartially.

Perhaps the only real warmth of feeling he had ever known was bestowed upon Edmund, and Miss Harrow had remarked that he spoke with somewhat more interest of Edmund's daughter, Amy, than of Alfred's daughter, Marian.

But it was doubtful whether the sudden disappearance from the earth of all his relatives would greatly have troubled him.

He lived a life of curious self-absorption, reading newspapers (little else), and talking with old friends who had stuck to him in spite of his irascibility.
Miss Harrow received her visitors in a small and soberly furnished drawing-room.

She was nervous, probably because of Jasper Milvain, whom she had met but once--last spring--and who on that occasion had struck her as an alarmingly modern young man.