him in the office over the ironmonger's at Turnhill, and
that both of them were extraordinarily changed. (She was reminded of
that interview not by his face and look, nor by their relative positions
at the table, but by a very faint odour of gas-fumes, for at Turnhill
also a gas-jet had been between them.) After an interval of anxiety and
depression he had regained exactly the triumphant self-sure air which
was her earliest recollection of him. He was not appreciably older. But
for her he was no longer the same man, because she saw him differently;
knowing much more of him, she read in his features a thousand minor
significances to which before she had been blind. The dominating
impression was not now the impression of his masculinity; there was no
clearly dominating impression. He had lost, for her, the romantic
allurement of the strange and the unknown.

Still, she liked and admired him. And she felt an awe, which was
agreeable to her, of his tremendous enterprise and his obstinate
volition. That faculty which he possessed, of uprooting himself and
uprooting others, put her in fear of him. He had willed to be
established as a caterer in Brighton--he who but yesterday (as it
seemed) was a lawyer in Turnhill--and, on this very night, he was
established in Brighton, and his sister with him, and she with his
sister! The enormous affair had been accomplished. This thought had been
obsessing Hilda all the afternoon and evening.

When she reflected upon the change in herself, the untravelled Hilda of
Turnhill appeared a stranger to her, and a simpleton!; no more!

As George Cannon offered no answer to her question, she said:

"I suppose it will have to be invested, all this?"

He nodded.

"Well, considering it's only been bringing in one per cent. per annum
for the last week... Of course I needn't have put it on deposit, but I
always prefer that way. It's more satisfactory."

Hilda could hear faintly, through the thin wooden partition, the
movements of Sarah Gailey in the next room. And the image of the
mournful woman returned to disquiet her. What could be the meaning of
that hysteric appeal and glance? Then she heard the door of the bedroom
open violently, and the figure of Sarah Gailey passed like a flash
across the doorway of the parlour. And the footsteps of Sarah Gailey
pattered up the stone stairs; and the front door banged; and the skirts
and feet of Sarah Gailey intercepted for an instant the light of the
s