"Is she in trouble?" Hilda asked bluntly. "I'm afraid she is." "What?" Janet suddenly gave a gesture of intimacy. "I believe she's starving!" "Starving!" Hilda repeated in a blank whisper. "Yes, I do! I do really believe she hasn't got enough to eat. She's quarrelled with just about everybody there was to quarrel with. She suffers fearfully with rheumatism. She never goes out--or scarcely ever. You know her dancing-classes have all fallen away to nothing. I fancy she tried taking lodgers--" "Yes, she did. I understood she was very good at housekeeping." "She hasn't got any lodgers now. There she is, all alone in that house, and--" "But she can't be _starving_!" Hilda protested. At intervals she glanced at the inner door, alarmed. "I really think she is," Janet persisted, softly persuasive. "But what's to be done?" "That's the point. I've just seen her. I went on purpose, because I'd heard.... But I had to pretend all sorts of things to make an excuse for myself. I couldn't offer her anything, could I? Isn't it dreadful?" They were much worried, these two young maids, full of health and vigour and faith, and pride and simplicity, by this startling first glimpse into one of the nether realities of existence. And they loyally tried to feel more worried than they actually were; they did their best, out of sympathy, to moderate the leaping, joyous vitality that was in them,-- and did not succeed very well. They were fine, they were touching--but they were also rather deliciously amusing--as they concentrated all their resources of solemnity and of worldly experience on the tragic case of the woman whom life had defeated. Hilda's memory rushed strangely to Victor Hugo. She was experiencing the same utter desolation--but somehow less noble--as had gripped her when she first realized the eternal picture, in _Oceana Nox_, of the pale-fronted widows who, tired of waiting for those whose barque had never returned out of the tempest, talked quietly among themselves of the lost--stirring the cinders in the fireplace and in their hearts.... Yet Sarah Gailey was not even a widow. She was an ageing dancing-mistress. She had once taught the grace of rhythmic movement to young limbs; and now she was rheumatic. "Nobody but Mr. Cannon can do anything," Janet murmured. "I'm sure he hasn't the slightest idea--not the slightest!" said Hilda half defensively. But she was saying to herself: "This man made me write a lie, and now I hear that his sister is starving--in the same town!" And she thought of his glossy opulence. "I'm quite sure of _that_!" she repeated to Janet. "Oh! So am I!" Janet eagerly concurred. "That's why I came.... Somebody had to give him a hint.... I never dreamt of finding you, dear!" "It is strange, isn't it?" said Hilda, the wondrous romance of things seizing her. Seen afresh, through the eyes of this charming, sympathetic acquaintance, was not Mr. Cannon's originality in engaging her positively astounding?