They drove down from the station in an open carriage, unencumbered by
the trunks, which George Cannon had separately disposed of. He sat with
his back to the horse, opposite the two women, and talked at intervals
about the weather, the prospects of the season, and the town. His
familiarity with the town was apparently such that he seemed to be a
native of it, and even in some mysterious way to have assisted in its
creation and development; so that he took pride in its qualities and
accepted responsibility for its defects. When he ceremoniously saluted
two women who went by in another carriage, Hilda felt sharply the
inferiority of an ignorant stranger in presence of one for whom the
place had no secrets.

Her first disappointment changed slowly into expectant and hopeful
curiosity. The quaint irregularities of the architecture, and the
vastness of the thronged perspectives, made promises to her romantic
sense. The town seemed to be endless as London. There were hotels,
churches, chapels, libraries, and music-shops on every hand. The more
ordinary features of main streets--the marts of jewellery, drapery, and
tobacco--had an air of grandiose respectability; while the narrow alleys
that curved enigmatically away between the lofty buildings of these fine
thoroughfares beckoned darkly to the fancy. The multiplicity of beggars,
louts, and organ-grinders was alone a proof of Brighton's success in the
world; the organ-grinders, often a man and a woman yoked together, were
extraordinarily English, genteel, and prosperous as they trudged in
their neat, middle-class raiment through the gritty mud of the macadam,
stolidly ignoring the menace of high-stepping horses and disdainful
glittering wheels. Brighton was evidently a city apart. Nevertheless,
Hilda did not as yet understand why George Cannon should have considered
it to be the sole field worthy of his enterprise.

Then the carriage rounded into King's Road, and suddenly she saw the
incredible frontage of hotels, and _pensions_ and apartments, and she
saw the broad and boundless promenade alive with all its processions of
pleasure, and she saw the ocean. And everything that she had seen up to
that moment fell to the insignificance of a background. She understood.

After a blusterous but mild autumn day the scarlet sun was setting
calmly between a saffron sky and saffron water; it flashed upon waves
and sails and flags, and upon the puddles in the road, and upon
bow-windows