Hilda nodded, and, speechless, moved towards the house. He turned abruptly away.
The front door of No. 59 was still open. Hilda passed through the silent hall, and went timorously down the steps to the basement. The gas was still burning, and the clothes were still strewn about in Sarah Gailey's bedroom, just as though naught had happened. Sarah stood between her two trunks in the middle of the floor.
"Where's George?" she asked, in a harsh, perfectly ordinary voice.
"I don't think he's in the parlour," Hilda prevaricated.
"Promise me you won't tell him!"
"Of course I won't!" said Hilda kindly. "Do get into bed, and let me make you some tea."
Sarah Gailey rushed at her and embraced her.
"I know I'm all wrong! I know it's all my own fault!" she murmured, with plaintive, feeble contrition, crying again. "But you've no idea how I try! If it wasn't for you--"
IV
That night Hilda, in her small bedroom at the top of the house, was listlessly arranging, at the back of the dressing-table, the few volumes which had clung to her, or to which she had clung, throughout the convulsive disturbances following her mother's death. Among them was one which she did not wish to keep, The Girls' Week-day Book, and also the whole set of Victor Hugo, which did not belong to her. George Cannon had lent her the latter in instalments, and she had omitted to return it. She was saying to herself that the opportunity to return it had at length arrived, when she heard a low, conspiratorial tapping at the door. All her skin crept as, after a second's startled hesitation, she moved to open the door.