them was one
which she did not wish to keep, _The Girls' Week-day Book,_ and also the
whole set of Victor Hugo, which did not belong to her. George Cannon had
lent her the latter in instalments, and she had omitted to return it.
She was saying to herself that the opportunity to return it had at
length arrived, when she heard a low, conspiratorial tapping at the
door. All her skin crept as, after a second's startled hesitation, she
moved to open the door.

George Cannon, holding a candle, stood on the landing. She had not seen
him since the brief colloquy between them outside the house. Having
satisfied herself that Sarah Gailey was safe, and to a certain extent
tranquillized, for the night, she had awaited George Cannon's
reappearance a long time in vain, and had then retired upstairs.

"You aren't gone to bed!" he whispered very cautiously. Within a few
feet of them was an airless kennel where Louisa, the chambermaid, slept.

"No! I'm just--I stayed up for you I don't know how long."

"Is she all right?"

"Well--she's in bed."

"I wish you'd come to one of these other rooms," he continued to
whisper. All the sibilants in his words seemed to detach themselves,
hissing, from the rest of the sounds.

She gave a gesture of assent. He tiptoed over the traitorous boards of
the landing, and slowly turned the knob of a door in the end wall. The
door exploded like the firing of a pistol; frowning, he grimly pushed it
open. Hilda followed him, noiselessly creeping. He held the door for
her. She entered, and he shut the door on the inside. They were in a
small bedroom similar to Hilda's own; but the bed was stripped, the
square of carpet rolled, the blind undrawn, and the curtains looped up
from the floor. He put the candle on the tiny iron mantelpiece, and sat
on the bed, his hands in his pockets.

"You don't mean to say she was wanting to commit suicide?" he said,
after a short reflective silence, with his head bent but his eyes raised
peeringly to Hilda's.

The crudity of the word, 'suicide,' affected Hilda painfully.

"If you ask me," said she, standing with her back rubbing against the
small wardrobe, "she didn't know quite what she was doing; but there's
no doubt that was what she went out for."

"You overtook her? I saw you coming up from the beach."

Hilda related what had happened.

"But had you any notion--before--"

"Me? No! Why?"

"Nothing! Only the way you rushed out like that!"

"Well--it struc