at's what they _say_.... He used to be a lawyer's clerk--at Toms
and Scoles's, I think it was. Then he left the district for a year or
two--or it might be several. And then his lordship comes back all of a
sudden, and sets up with Mr. Karkeek, just like that."

"Can he talk French?"

"Who? Mr. Cannon? He can talk _English_! My word, he can that! Eh, he's
a 'customer,' he is--a regular' customer'!"

Hilda, instead of being seated at the table, was away in far realms of
romance.

The startling thought occurred to her:

"Of course, he'll expect me to go and see him! He's done what I asked
him, and he'll expect me to go and see him and talk it over. And I
suppose I shall have to pay him something. I'd forgotten that, and I
ought not to have forgotten it."

CHAPTER VI
VICTOR HUGO AND ISAAC PITMAN

I

The next morning, Saturday, Hilda ran no risk in visiting Mr. Cannon.
Her mother's cold, after a fictitious improvement, had assumed an
aggravated form in order to prove that not with impunity may nature be
flouted in unheated October drawing-rooms; and Hilda had been requested
to go to market alone. She was free. And even supposing that the visit
should be observed by the curious, nobody would attach any importance to
it, because everybody would soon be aware that Mr. Cannon had assumed
charge of the Calder Street property.

Past the brass plates of Mr. Q. Karkeek, out of the straw-littered
hubbub of the market-place, she climbed the long flight of stairs
leading to the offices on the first floor. In one worsted-gloved hand
she held a market-basket of multi-coloured wicker, which dangled a
little below the frilled and flounced edge of her blue jacket. Secure in
the pocket of her valanced brown skirt--for at that time and in that
place it had not yet occurred to any woman that pockets were a
superfluity--a private half-sovereign lay in the inmost compartment of
her purse; this coin was destined to recompense Mr. Cannon. Her free
hand went up to the heavy chignon that hung uncertainly beneath her
bonnet--a gesture of coquetry which she told herself she despised.

Her face was a prim and rather forbidding mask, assuredly a mysterious
mask. She could not have explained her own feelings. She was still in
the adventure, but the end of it was immediate. She had nothing to hope
from the future. Her essential infelicity was as profound and as
enigmatic as ever. She might have said with deliberate and vehement
since