. She moaned, as she moaned continually when awake. Hilda
bent over her trembling head whose right side pressed upon the pillow.

"How queer," thought Hilda, "how awful, that she didn't even hear what I
said to him! It will almost kill her when she does know."

Sarah's eyes blinked. Without stirring, without shifting her horizontal,
preoccupied gaze from the wall, she muttered peevishly:

"What's that you were saying about going to have a child?"

Startled, Hilda moved back a little from the bed.

"The doctor says there's no doubt I am," Hilda answered coldly.

"How queer!" Sarah said. "I quite thought--but of course a girl like you
are couldn't be sure. I should like another biscuit. But I don't want
the Osbornes--the others." She resumed her moaning.

IV

On the following Saturday morning--rather more than a fortnight after
her engagement to Edwin Clayhanger--Hilda came out of the kitchen of
No. 59 Preston Street, and shut the door on a nauseating, malodorous
mess of broken food and greasy plates, in the midst of which two
servants were noisily gobbling down their late breakfast, and disputing.
With a frown of disgust on her face, she looked into Sarah Gailey's
bedroom. Sarah, though vaguely better, was still in constant acute pain,
and her knee still reposed on a pillow, and was protected from the upper
bed-clothes, and she still could not move. Hilda put on a smile for
Sarah Gailey, who nodded morosely, and then, extinguishing the smile, as
if it had been expensive gas burning to no purpose, she passed into the
basement sitting-room, and slaked the fire there. With a gesture of
irresolution, she lifted the lid of the desk in the corner, and gazed
first at a little pile of four unopened letters addressed to her in
Edwin's handwriting, and then at a volume of Crashaw, which the
enthusiastic Tom Orgreave had sent to her as a reward for her
appreciation of Crashaw's poems. She released the lid suddenly, and went
upstairs to her bedroom, chatting sugarily for an instant on the way
with the second Miss Watchett. In the bedroom, she donned her street
things, and then she descended. She had to go to the Registry Office in
North Street about a new cook. She stopped at the front door, and then
surprisingly went down once more into the basement sitting-room.
Standing up at the desk, she wrote this letter: "DARLING JANET,--I am
now married to George Cannon. The marriage is not quite public, but I
tell you before anybo