o to
execute his promise of aid; she had felt that time was running short if
her mother was to be prevented from commencing rent-collector on the
Monday; she had perhaps ingenuously expected from him some kind of
miracle; but of a surety she had never dreamed that he would call in
person at her home. "He must be mad!" she would have exclaimed to
herself, if the grandeur of his image in her heart had not made any such
accusation impossible to her. He was not mad; he was merely inscrutable,
terrifyingly so. It was as if her adventurous audacity, personified, had
doubled back on her, and was exquisitely threatening her.

"Good afternoon!" said Mr. Cannon, smiling confidently and yet with
ceremoniousness. "Is your mother about?"

"Yes." Hilda did not know it, but she was whispering quite in the manner
of Florrie.

"Shall I come in?"

"Oh! Please do!" The words jumped out of her mouth all at once, so
anxious was she to destroy any impression conceivably made that she did
not desire him to come in.

He crossed the step and took her hand with one gesture. She shut the
door. He waited in suave silence. There was barely space for them
together in the narrow lobby, and she scarce dared look up at him. He
easily dominated her. His bigness subdued her, and the handsomeness of
his face and his attire was like a moral intimidation. He had a large
physical splendour that was well set off and illustrated by the
brilliance of his linen and his broadcloth. She was as modest as a mouse
beside him. The superior young woman, the stern and yet indulgent
philosopher, had utterly vanished, and only a poor little mouse
remained.

"Will you please come into the drawing-room?" she murmured when, after
an immense effort to keep full control of her faculties, she had decided
where he must be put.

"Thanks," he said.

As she diminished herself, with beautiful shy curves of her body,
against the wall so that he could manoeuvre his bigness through the
drawing-room doorway, he gave her a glance half benign and half politely
malicious, which seemed to say again: "I know you're afraid, and I
rather like it. But you know you needn't be."

"Please take a seat," she implored. And then quickly, as he seemed to
have no intention of speaking to her confidentially, "I'll tell mother."

Leaving the room, she saw him sink smoothly into a seat, his rich-piled
hat in one gloved hand and an ebony walking-stick in the other. His
presence had a disastrou