She had not expected this. "I suppose I shall have to tell him!" she
said to herself, and aloud: "Lessways."

"Oh! Ah!" exclaimed the man. "Bless us! Yes!" It was as if he had said:
"Of course it's Lessways! And don't I know all about _you!_" And Hilda
was overwhelmed by the sense of the enormity of the folly which she was
committing.

The man swung half round on his stool, and seized the end of an
india-rubber tube which hung at the side of the battered and littered
desk, just under a gas-jet. He spoke low, like a conspirator, into the
mouthpiece of the tube. "Miss Lessways--to see you, sir." Then very
quickly he clapped the tube to his ear and listened. And then he put it
to his mouth again and repeated: "Lessways." Hilda was agonized.

"I'll ask ye to step this way, miss," said the man, slipping off his
stool. At the same time he put a long inky penholder, which he had been
holding in his wrinkled right hand, between his teeth.

"Never," thought Hilda as she followed the clerk, in a whirl of horrible
misgivings, "never have I done anything as mad as this before! I'm under
twenty-one!"


III

There she was at last, seated in front of a lawyer in a lawyer's
office--her ladyship consulting her own lawyer! It seemed incredible! A
few minutes ago she had been at home, and now she was in a world