/2d. It
was nothing to her that Mrs. Maldon had had "an attack." Miss Malkin
merely saw Rachel and Fores gadding about the town together of a
Saturday night while Mrs. Maldon was ill in bed. And she regarded
Ted's benevolence as the benevolence of a simpleton. Between Miss
Malkin's taciturnity and the voice within her Rachel had a terrible
three minutes. She was "sneaped"; which fortunately made her red hair
angry, so that she could keep some of her dignity. Louis Fores seemed
to be quite unconscious that a fearful scene was enacting between Miss
Malkin and Rachel, and he blandly insisted on taking the pineapple-tin
and the cocoa-tin and slipping them into the reticule, as though he
had been shopping with Rachel all his life and there was a perfect
understanding between them. The moral effect was very bad. Rachel
blushed again.

When she emerged from the shop she had the illusion of being
breathless, and in the midst of a terrific adventure the end of which
none could foresee. She was furious against Miss Malkin and against
herself. Yet she indignantly justified herself. Was not Louis Fores
Mrs. Maiden's nephew, and were not he and she doing the best thing
they could together under the difficult circumstances of the old
lady's illness? If she was not to co-operate with the old lady's sole
relative in Bursley, with whom was she to co-operate? In vain such
justifications!... She murderously hated Miss Malkin. She said to
herself, without meaning it, that no power should induce her ever to
enter the shop again.

And she thought: "I can't possibly go into another shop to-night--I
can't possibly do it! And yet I must. Why am I such a silly baby?"

As they walked slowly along the pavement she was in the wild dream
anew, and Louis Fores was her only hope and reliance. She clung to
him, though not with her arm. She seemed to know him very intimately,
and still he was more enigmatic to her than ever he had been.

As for Louis, beneath his tranquil mien of a man of experience and
infinite tact, he was undergoing the most extraordinary and delightful
sensations, keener even than those which had thrilled him in Rachel's
kitchen on the previous evening. The social snob in him had somehow
suddenly expired, and he felt intensely the strange charm of going
shopping of a Saturday night with a young woman, and making a
little purchase here and a little purchase there, and thinking about
halfpennies. And in his fancy he built a small