"I shall be all right," said Hilda confidently and joyously. She was sure that the excursion to London had appealed to her mother's latent love of the unexpected, and that her faculty for accepting placidly whatever fate offered would prevent her from resisting the pressure that Sarah Gailey and Mr. Cannon would obviously exert.
"Shall you!" Mrs. Lessways muttered.
"Why not take your daughter with you, too?" Mr. Cannon suggested.
"Oh!" cried Hilda, shocked. "I couldn't possibly leave my work just now.... The paper just coming out.... You couldn't spare me." She spoke with pride, using phrases similar to those which he had used to explain to Sarah Gailey why he could not remain with her in London even for a night.
"Oh yes, I could," he answered kindly, lightly, carelessly, shattering--in his preoccupation with one idea--all her fine, loyal pretensions. "We should manage all right."
III
She was hurt. She was mortally pierced. The blow was too cruel. She lowered her glance before his, and fixed it on the table-cloth. Her brow darkened. Her lower lip bulged out. She was the child again. He had with atrocious inhumanity reduced her to the unimportance of a child. She had bestowed on him and his interests the gift of her whole soul, and he had said that it was negligible. And the worst was that he was perfectly unaware of what he had done. He had not even observed the symptoms of her face. He had turned at once to the older women and was continuing the conversation. He had ridden over her, and ridden on without a look behind. The conversation moved, after a pause, back to the plausible excuse for his call. He desired to see some old rent-book which would show how the doomed tenant in Calder Street had originally fallen into arrears.
"Where is that old book of Mr. Skellorn's, Hilda?" her mother asked.
She could not speak. The sob was at her throat. If she had spoken it would have burst through, and she would have been not merely the child, but the disgraced child.
"Hilda!" repeated her mother.