by nature.

"By the way," he murmured, "what's Mr Cannon?"

"Oh!" said Janet, hesitating, with emotion, "she's a widow."

He felt sick. Janet might have been a doctor who had informed him that
he was suffering from an unexpected disease, and that an operation
severe and perilous lay in front of him. The impartial observer in him
asked somewhat disdainfully why he should allow himself to be deranged
in this physical manner, and he could only reply feebly and very meekly
that he did not know. He felt sick.

Suddenly he said to himself making a discovery--

"Of course she won't come to Bursley. She'd be ashamed to meet me."

"How long?" he demanded of Janet.

"It was last year, I think," said Janet, with emotion increased, her
voice heavy with the load of its sympathy. When he first knew Janet an
extraordinary quick generous concern for others had been one of her
chief characteristics. But of late years, though her deep universal
kindness had not changed, she seemed to have hardened somewhat on the
surface. Now he found again the earlier Janet.

"You never told me."

"The truth is, we didn't know," Janet said, and without giving Edwin
time to put another question, she continued: "The poor thing's had a
great deal of trouble, a very great deal. George's health, now! The
sea air doesn't suit him. And Hilda couldn't possibly leave Brighton."

"Oh! She's still at Brighton?"

"Yes."

"Let me see--she used to be at--what was it?--Preston Street?"

Janet glanced at him with interest: "What a memory you've got! Why,
it's ten years since she was here!"

"Nearly!" said Edwin. "It just happened to stick in my mind. You
remember she came down to the shop to ask me about trains and things the
day she left."

"Did she?" Janet exclaimed, raising her eyebrows.

Edwin had been suspecting that possibly Hilda had given some hint to
Janet as to the nature of her relations with him. He now ceased to
suspect that. He grew easier. He gathered up the reins again, though
in a rather limp hand.

"Why is she so bound to stay in Brighton?" he inquired with affected
boldness.

"She's got a boarding-house."

"I see. Well, it's a good thing she has a private income of her own."

"That's just the point," said Janet sadly. "We very much doubt if she
has any private income any longer."

Edwin waited for further details, but Janet seemed to speak unwilling.
She would follow him, but she would not lead.

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