er mother was a creature contented enough. And why not--with a
sufficient income, a comfortable home, and fair health? At the end of a
day devoted partly to sheer vacuous idleness and partly to the
monotonous simple machinery of physical existence--everlasting cookery,
everlasting cleanliness, everlasting stitchery--her mother did not with
a yearning sigh demand, "Must this sort of thing continue for ever, or
will a new era dawn?" Not a bit! Mrs. Lessways went to bed in the placid
expectancy of a very similar day on the morrow, and of an interminable
succession of such days. The which was incomprehensible and offensive to
Hilda.

She was in a prison with her mother, and saw no method of escape, saw
not so much as a locked door, saw nothing but blank walls. Even could
she by a miracle break prison, where should she look for the unknown
object of her desire, and for what should she look? Enigmas! It is true
that she read, occasionally with feverish enjoyment, especially verse.
But she did not and could not read enough. Of the shelf-ful of books
which in thirty years had drifted by one accident or another into the
Lessways household, she had read every volume, except Cruden's
Concordance. A heterogeneous and forlorn assemblage! Lavater's
_Physiognomy_, in a translation and in full calf! Thomson's _Seasons_,
which had thrilled her by its romantic beauty! Mrs. Henry Wood's
_Danesbury House_, and one or two novels by Charlotte M. Yonge and Dinah
Maria Craik, which she had gulped eagerly down for the mere interest of
their stories. Disraeli's _Ixion_, which she had admired without
understanding it. A _History of the North American Indians!_ These were
the more exciting items of the set. The most exciting of all was a green
volume of Tennyson's containing _Maud_. She knew _Maud_ by heart. By
simple unpleasant obstinacy she had forced her mother to give her this
volume for a birthday present, having seen a quotation from it in a
ladies' magazine. At that date in Turnhill, as in many other towns of
England, the poem had not yet lived down a reputation for immorality;
but fortunately Mrs. Lessways had only the vaguest notion of its
dangerousness, and was indeed a negligent kind of woman. Dangerous the
book was! Once in reciting it aloud in her room, Hilda had come so near
to fainting that she had had to stop and lie down on the bed, until she
could convince herself that she was not the male lover crying to his
beloved. An astoundi