eps, ceasing to be
heard as the sisters left the shop at the back. The solicitude of
Maggie for Clara during the last few months had seemed wonderful to
Edwin, as also Clara's occasional childlike acceptance of it.

"But you must come in!" he said more boldly to the visitors, asking
himself whether either Janet on Hilda had caught sight of his sisters in
the gloom of the shop.

They entered, Hilda stiffly. Each with the same gesture closed her
parasol before passing through the slit between the shutters into the
deep shade. But whereas Janet smiled with pleasant anticipation as
though she was going into heaven, Hilda wrinkled her forehead when her
parasol would not subside at the first touch.

Janet talked of the Centenary; said they had decided only that morning
to come down into the town and see whatever was to be seen; said with an
angelic air of apologising to the Centenary that up at Lane End House
they had certainly been under-estimating its importance and its interest
as a spectacle; said that it was most astonishing to see all the shops
closed. And Edwin interjected vague replies, pulling the chair out of
the little ebonised cubicle so that they could both sit down. And Hilda
remained silent. And Edwin's thoughts were diving darkly beneath
Janet's chatter as in a deep sea beneath light waves. He heard and
answered Janet with a minor part of his being that functioned
automatically.

"She's a caution!" reflected the main Edwin, obsessed in secret by Hilda
Lessways. Who could have guessed, by looking at her, that only three
evenings before she had followed him in the night to question him, to
squeeze his hand, and to be rude to him? Did Janet know? Did anyone?
No! He felt sure that he and she had the knowledge of that interview to
themselves. She sat down glum, almost glowering. She was no more
worldly than Maggie and Clara were worldly. Than they, she had no more
skill to be sociable. And in appearance she was scarcely more stylish.
But she was not as they, and it was useless vindictively to disparage
her by pretending that she was. She could be passionate concerning
Victor Hugo. She was capable of disturbing herself about the abstract
question of belief. He had not heard her utter a single word in the way
of common girlish conversation.

The doubt again entered his mind whether indeed her visit to the porch
of the new house had been due to a genuine interest in abstract
questions and not t