He gave the twisted, difficult, rather foolish smile of one who is cursing the mortification of a predicament into which he has been cast through no fault of his own. "Please what?" "Please sit down." He waved a hand, deprecatingly, and obeyed. "It's all right," he said. "All right! I ought to have known--" Then he smiled generously. "Known what?" Her voice was now weak and liquid with woe. "You'd be likely to be upset." Not furtively, but openly, she wiped her eyes. "No, no!" she protested honestly. "It's not that. It's--but--I'm very sorry." "I reckon I know a bit what worry is, myself!" he added, with a brief, almost harsh, laugh. These strange words struck her with pity. III "Well, now,"--he seemed to be beginning again--let's leave Lessways Street for a minute.... I can sell the Calder Street property for you, if you like. And at a pretty good price. Sooner or later the town will have to buy up all that side of the street. You remember I told your mother last year but one I could get a customer for it? but she wasn't having any." "Yes," said Hilda eagerly; "I remember." In her heart she apologized to George Cannon, once more, for having allowed her mother to persuade her, even for a day, that that attempt to buy was merely a trick on his part invented to open negotiations for the rent-collecting. "You know what the net rents are," he went on, "as you've had 'em every month. I dare say the purchase money if it's carefully invested will bring you in as much. But even if it doesn't bring in quite as much, you mustn't forget that Calder Street's going down--it's getting more and more of a slum. And there'll always be a lot of bother with tenants of that class." "I wish I could sell everything--everything!" she exclaimed passionately. "Lessways Street as well! Then I should be absolutely free!" "You can!" he said, with dramatic emphasis. "And let me tell you that ten years hence those Lessways Street houses won't be worth what they are now!" "Is that property going down, too?" she asked. "I thought they were building all round there." "So they are," he answered. "But cheap cottages. Your houses are too good for that part of the town; that's what's the matter with them. People who can afford £25 a year--and over--for rent won't care to live there much longer. You know the end house is empty." All houses seemed to her to be a singularly insecure and even perilous form of property. And the sale of everything she possessed presented itself to her fancy as a transaction which would enfranchise her from the past. It symbolized the starting-point of a new life, of a recommencement unhampered by the vestiges of grief and error. She could go anywhere, do what she chose. The entire world would lie before her. "Please do sell it all for me!" she pleaded wistfully. "Supposing you could, about how much should I have--I mean income?"