MRS. LESSWAYS' SHREWDNESS


I

Waiting irresolute in the kitchen doorway, Hilda passed the most
thrillingly agreeable moments that destiny had ever vouchsafed to her.
She dwelt on the mysterious, attractive quality of Mr. Cannon's
voice,--she was sure that, though in speaking to her mother he was
softly persuasive, he had used to herself a tone even more intimate and
ingratiating. He and she had a secret; they were conspirators together:
which fact was both disconcerting and delicious. She recalled their
propinquity in the lobby; the remembered syllables which he had uttered
mingled with the faint scent of his broadcloth, the whiteness of his
wristbands, the gleam of his studs, the droop of his moustaches, the
downward ray of his glance, and the proud, nimble carriage of his great
limbs,--and formed in her mind the image of an ideal. An image regarded
not with any tenderness, but with naïve admiration, and unquestioning
respect! And yet also with more than that, for when she dwelt on his
glance, she had a slight transient feeling of faintness which came and
went in a second, and which she did not analyse--and could not have
analysed.

Clouds of fear sailed in swift capriciousness across the sky of her
dreaming, obscuring it: fear of Mr. Cannon's breath-taking initiative,
fear of the upshot of her adventure, and a fear without a name.
Nevertheless she exulted. She exulted because she was in the very midst
of her wondrous adventure and tingling with a thousand apprehensions.

After a long time the latch of the drawing-room door cracked warningly.