stir; Sarah
Gailey did not stir; Louisa's fury was sated. The empty landing lay, as
it were, expectant at Hilda's door.

Then Sarah Gailey perceived Hilda half hidden in the doorway, and
staggeringly rushed towards her. In an instant they were both in the
bedroom and the door shut.

"When will George be back so that he can put her out of the house?"
Sarah whispered frantically.

"Soon, I expect," said Hilda, and felt intensely self-conscious.

They said no more. And it was as though the house were besieged and
invested, and only in that room were they safe, and even in that room
only for a few moments.

CHAPTER II
SOME SECRET HISTORY

I

Without a word, Sarah had left the bedroom. Hilda waited, sitting on the
bed, for George to come back from his haunts in the town. She both
intensely desired and intensely feared his return. A phrase or two of an
angry and vicious servant had almost destroyed her faith in her husband.
It seemed very strange, even to her, that this should be so; and she
wondered whether she had ever had a real faith in him, whether--passion
apart--her feeling for him had ever been aught but admiration of his
impressive adroitness. Was it possible that he had another wife alive?
No, it was not possible! That is to say, it was not possible that such a
catastrophe should have happened to just her, to Hilda Lessways, sitting
there on the bed with her hands pressing on the rough surface of the
damask counterpane. And yet--how could Louisa or Florrie have invented
the story?... Wicked, shocking, incredible, that Florrie, with her soft
voice and timid, affectionate manner, should have been chattering in
secret so scandalously during all these weeks! She remembered the look
on Florrie's blushing face when the child had received the letter on the
morning of their departure from the house in Lessways Street. Even then
the attractively innocent and capable Florrie must have had her naughty
secrets!... An odious world. And Hilda, married, had seriously thought
that she knew all about the world! She had to admit, bewildered: "I'm
only a girl after all, and a very simple one." She compared her own
heart in its simplicity with that of Louisa. Louisa horrified and
frightened her.... Louisa and Florrie were mischievous liars. Florrie
had seized some fragment of silly gossip--Turnhill was notorious for its
silly gossip--and the two of them had embroidered it in the nastiness of
their souls. She laughed