"I don't think I shall get up for lunch to-day."
Sarah Gailey moved to the bed, forgetting her own trouble.
"You aren't so well, then, after all!" she muttered, with mournful commiseration. "But, you know, he'll have to see you, this time. He wants to."
"But why?"
"Your affairs, I suppose. He says so. 'Coming lunch one. Must see Hilda.--George.'"
Sarah Gailey offered the telegram. But Hilda could not bear to take it. This telegram was the first she had set eyes on since the telegram handed to her by Florrie in George Cannon's office. The mere sight of the salmon-tinted paper agitated her. "Is it possible that I can be so silly?" she thought, "over a bit of paper!" But so it was.
On a previous visit of George Cannon's to Hornsey she had kept her bed throughout the day, afraid to meet him, ashamed to meet him, inexplicably convinced that to meet him would be a crime against filial piety. There were obscure grottoes in her soul which she had not had the courage to explore candidly.
"I think," said Sarah Gailey, reflective and anxious, "I think if you could get up, it would be nicer than him seeing you here in bed."
Hilda perceived that at last she would be compelled to face George Cannon.