"Well, Miss Hilton! I am very pleased to see you. You've come a long way in the wet. You must have a glass of something hot. Jane! Jane!" he shouted, stamping to the door and looking up the staircase. There was a sudden clatter, and Jane appeared in the doorway laughing, because she had run downstairs so quickly that she had almost fallen. "That's smart work," said Burton. "These stairs is so steep it's the easiest way of coming down 'em," said Jane with an air of proprietorship, with the familiarity and importance also of one who knows she is welcome, and, whatever other people may think, has a power which no one else present has with the only man in the room. "Well, you have chosen a wet day to pay us a visit, Miss Hilton," she said, with a hospitality too effusive to be spontaneous. She was a very attractive girl, with fair hair and pretty eyes, made for affection and to take a spoiling prettily. At present she had no misgiving about her lover's good intentions, and this gave her the confidence which naturally she lacked. Besides, she had never thought Anne Hilton important. Anne, seeing the handsome room, the gaiety of Jane, and affection of Burton, found herself wishing that there were no reason why it should not continue so, to all appearance a happy home of newly-married people. She saw none of the signs of shame in Jane which she herself had suffered. "I've not just come to pay you a visit, Jane, my dear," she said. "I've come in the place of your grandmother who's dead, to take you away with me." "Whatever for?" exclaimed Burton, loudly. "Do you think I can't make her comfortable? She's never been so happy in her life, have you, Jane?" "No!" returned Jane, very red. "And I don't see what Miss Hilton's got to do with it anyway." "No more don't I," returned Burton, with a laugh. "But let's hear what she's got to say about it. So you want Jane to go back to starving at dressmaking, Miss Hilton? She's a lot more comfortable here, I can tell you. She's got a servant, and she can have her dresses made out. She's no need to do anything but fancy work." "It's the sin of a good, respectable girl taking such things for a price," interrupted Anne, "and of you, Mr Burton, to entice her to it, and keep her like this. It's not on _you_ the judgment'll fall, but on _her_. How's she to face the neighbours and everybody she's known from a child when you've done with her?" "I've not done with her yet by a good way," said Burton. "Don't you worry yourself, Miss Hilton." "You're a man of money and position, and a newcomer in the neighbourhood," went on Anne, "and the neighbours are afraid to say anything before you. But they say plenty about Jane, whom they've known all their life. Young people she used to play with talk of her with shame, and when you've finished with her she'll not have a friend to go to."