ily in Calder Street, there remained scarcely a trace, in the
company's demeanour, of the shamed consciousness that only two days
before its members had been divided by disastrous enmities and that one
of them had lacked the means of life.

II

"Oh no! my dear girl! You're too modest--that's what's the matter with
you," said George Cannon eagerly to his half-sister. The epithet
flattered but did not allay her timidity. To Hilda it seemed
mysteriously romantic.

The supreme topic had worked its way into the conversation. Uppermost in
the minds of all, it seemed to have forced itself out by its own
intrinsic energy, against the will of the company. Impossible to decide
who first had let it forth! But George Cannon had now fairly seized it
and run off with it. He was almost boyishly excited over it. The Latin
strain in him animated his features and his speech. He was a poet as he
talked of the boarding-house that awaited a mistress. He had pulled out
of his pocket the cutting of an advertisement of it from the London
_Daily Telegraph_, a paper that was never seen in Turnhill. And this bit
of paper, describing in four lines the advantages of the boarding-house,
had the effect of giving the actual house a symbolic reality. "There it
is!" he exclaimed, slapping down the paper. And there it appeared really
to be. The bit of paper was extraordinarily persuasive. It compelled
everybody to realize, now for the first time, that the house did in fact
exist. George Cannon had an overwhelming answer to all timorous
objections. The boarding-house was remunerative; boarders were at that
very moment in it. The nominal proprietor was not leaving it because he
was losing money on the boarding-house, but because he had lost money in
another enterprise quite foreign to it, and had pledged all the contents
of the boarding-house as security. The occasion was one in a thousand,
one in a million. He, George Cannon, through a client, had the entire
marvellous affair between his finger and thumb, and most obviously Sarah
Gailey was the woman of all women for the vacant post at his
disposition. Chance was waiting on her. She had nothing whatever to do
but walk into the house as a regent into a kingdom, and rule. Only,
delay was impossible. All was possible except delay. She would
inevitably succeed; she could not fail. And it would be a family
affair....

Tea was finished and forgotten.

"For your own sake!" he wound up a peroration. "It r