"I'm going to keep your accounts for you," Hilda soothed her. "But--" "I'm going to keep your accounts for you," And she thought: "How exactly like mother I was just then!" It appeared to Hilda that she was making a promise, and shouldering a responsibility, against her will, and perhaps against her common sense. She might keep accounts at the Cedars for a week, a fortnight, a month. But she could not keep accounts there indefinitely. She was sowing complications for herself. Freedom and change and luxury were what she deemed she desired; not a desk in a boarding-house. And yet something within her compelled her to say in a firm, sure, kindly voice: "Now give me all those papers, Miss Gailey." And amid indefinite regret and foreboding, she was proud and happy in her rôle of benefactor. When Hilda at length rose to go to her own room, Sarah Gailey had to move her chair so that she might pass. At the door both hesitated for an instant, and then Hilda with a sudden gesture advanced her lips. It was the first time she and Sarah had ever kissed. The contact with that desiccated skin intensified to an extraordinary degree Hilda's emotional sympathy for the ageing woman. She thought, poignantly: "Poor old thing!" And when she was on the dark little square landing under the roof, Sarah, holding the lamp, called out in a whisper. "Hilda!" "Well?" "Did he say anything to you about Brighton?" "Brighton?" She perceived with certainty from Sarah's eager and yet apologetic tone, that the question had been waiting for utterance throughout the evening, and that Sarah had lacked courage for it until the kiss had enheartened her. And also she perceived that Sarah was suspecting her of being somehow in conspiracy with George Cannon. "Yes," said Sarah. "He's got into his head that Brighton's the only place for this boarding-house business if it's to be properly done." "He never said a word to me about Brighton," Hilda whispered positively. "Oh!" Hilda descended the stairs, groping. Brighton? What next? CHAPTER III AT BRIGHTON I