ion of this one word Sarah Gailey condemned
Mrs. Granville's whole life.

"Can I empty this chair? I shall want something to stand on," said
Hilda.

"Better see if the shelf's dusty," Sarah gloomily warned her.

"Well," murmured Hilda, on the chair. "If my feather doesn't actually
touch the ceiling!" Sarah Gailey made no response to this
light-heartedness, and Hilda, with her hands full of vain gewgaws, tried
again: "I wonder what Mrs. Granville would say if she saw me!... My
word, it's quite hot up here!"

A resonant, very amiable voice came from beyond the door: "Is she
there?"

"Who?" demanded Sarah, grievous.

"Miss Lessways." It was George Cannon.

"Yes."

"I just want to speak to her if she's at liberty," said George Cannon.

Hilda cried from the ceiling: "I'll come as soon as I've--"

"Please go now," Sarah interrupted in tense accents. Hilda glanced down
at her, astonished, and saw in her eyes an almost childish appeal, weak
and passionate, which gripped the heart painfully.

She jumped from the chair. Sarah Gailey was now sitting on the bed. Yes,
in her worn face of a woman who has definitely passed the climacteric,
and in the abandoned pose of those thin arms, there was the look and
gesture of a young girl desperately beseeching. Hilda was puzzled and
intimidated. She had meant to be jocular, and to insist on staying till
the task was finished. But she kept silence and obeyed the supplication,
from a motive of prudence.

"I wouldn't keep you from him for anything," murmured Sarah Gailey
tragically, as Hilda opened the door and left her sitting forlorn among
all her skirts and linen.

II

"I'm here," George Cannon called out from the parlour when he heard the
sound of the door. He was looking from the window up at the street; the
blind had not been drawn. He turned as Hilda entered.

"You've been out!" he said, observing that she was in street attire.

"What is it?" she asked nervously, fearing that some altercation had
already occurred between brother and sister.

"It's about your private affairs--that's all," he said easily, and
half-humourously. "If you'll just come in."

"Oh!" she smiled her relief; but nevertheless she was still preoccupied
by the image of the woman in the next room.

"They've been dragging on quite long enough," said George Cannon, as he
stooped to poke the morsel of fire in the old-fashioned grate, which had
a hob on either side. On one of these hobs was a glas