s
as if supplicating to be believed.

"You needn't tell me that," said Hilda. She was not angry, but bored, by
this characteristic remark of Miss Gailey's. In three months she had
learnt a great deal about the new landlady of the Cedars, that strange
neurotic compound of ability, devotion, thin-skinned vanity, and sheer,
narrow stupidity. "I've been quite warm enough," Hilda added as quickly
as she could, lest Miss Gailey might have time to convince herself to
the contrary.

"And the toast? I do hope--after all I've said to that Hettie about--"

"You see I've eaten it all," Hilda interrupted her, pointing to the
plate.

Their faces were close together; they exchanged a sad smile. Miss Gailey
was still bending over her, anxiously, as over a child. Yet neither the
ageing and worn woman nor the flaccid girl felt the difference between
them in age. Nor was Hilda in any ordinary sense ill. The explanation of
Miss Gailey's yearning attitude lay in an exaggerated idea of her duty
to Hilda, whose mother's death had been the result of an act of
friendliness to her. If Mrs. Lessways had not come to London in order to
keep company with Sarah, she might--she would, under Providence--have
been alive and well that day; such was Sarah's reasoning, which by the
way ignored certain statements of the doctor. Sarah would never forgive
herself. But she sought, by an infatuated devotion, to earn the
forgiveness of Caroline's daughter. Her attentions might have infuriated
an earlier Hilda, or at least have been met with disdain only half
concealed. But on the present actual Hilda they produced simply no
effect of any kind. The actual Hilda, living far within the mysterious
fastness of her own being, was too solitary, too preoccupied, and too
fatigued, to be touched even by the noble beauty that distinguished the
expiatory and protective gesture of the spinster, otherwise somewhat
ludicrous, as she leaned across the bed and cut off the sunshine.

II

On the morning of her mother's funeral, Hilda had gone to Hornsey
Station to meet an uncle of Mrs. Lessways, who was coming down from
Scotland by the night-train. She scarcely knew him, but he was to be
recognizable by his hat and his muffler, and she was to await him at the
ticket-gate. An entirely foolish and unnecessary arrangement, contrived
by a peculiar old man: the only possible course was to accept it.

She had waited over half an hour, between eight and nine, and in that
time