negligently, like a
religious formality which has lost its meaning but which custom insists
on.

Hilda could not but share her mother's satisfaction. She could not
entirely escape the soft influence of the tranquillity in which the
household was newly bathed. The domestic existence of unmated women
together, though it is full of secret exasperations, also has its hours
of charm--a charm honied, perverse, and unique. Hilda felt the charm.
But she was suddenly sad, and she again found pleasure in her sadness.
She was sad because her adventure was over--over too soon and too
easily. She thought, now, that really she would have preferred a
catastrophe as the end of it. She had got what she desired; but she was
no better off than she had been before the paralytic stroke of Mr.
Skellorn. Domesticity had closed in on her once more. Her secret
adventure had become sterile. Its risks were destroyed, and nothing
could spring from it. Nevertheless it lived in her heart. After all it
had been tremendous! And the virtue of audacious initiative was
miraculous!... Yes, her mother was shrewd enough--that could not be
denied--but she was not so shrewd as she imagined; for it had never
occurred to her, and it never would occur to her, even in the absurdest
dream--that the author of Mr. Cannon's visit was the girl sitting
opposite to her and delicately pecking at jelly!

"How is he Miss Gailey's half-brother?" Hilda demanded half-way through
the meal.

"Why! Mrs. Gailey--Sarah Gailey's mother, that is--married a foreigner
after her first husband died."

"But Mr. Cannon isn't a foreigner?"

"He's half a foreigner. Look at his eyes. Surely you knew all about
that, child!... No, it was before your time."

Hilda then learnt that Mrs. Gailey had married a French modeller named
Canonges, who had been brought over from Limoges (or some such sounding
place) by Peels at Bursley, the great rivals of Mintons and of
Copelands. And that in course of time the modeller had informally
changed the name to Cannon, because no one in the Five Towns could
pronounce the true name rightly. And that George Cannon, the son of the
union, had been left early an orphan.

"How did he come to be a solicitor?" Hilda questioned eagerly.

"They say he isn't really a solicitor," said Mrs. Lessways. "That is, he
hasn't passed his examinations like. But I dare say he knows as much law
as a lot of 'em, _and_ more! And he has that Mr. Karkeek to cover him
like. Th