"Take your own time, my dear; I will keep the situation open for you
for one week from this date. And now I must send you away, for I have
a great deal to do."

They parted quite like friends; and Hilary went out, walking quickly,
feeling neither the wind nor the rain. Yet when she reached No. 15
she could not bring herself to enter, but took another turn or two
round the Crescent, trying to be quite sure of her own mind before
she opened the matter to her sisters.--

And there was one little battle to be fought which the sisters did
know.

It was perhaps foolish, seeing she did not belong to him in any open
way, and he had no external right over her life or her actions, that
she should go back and back to the question, "What would Robert Lyon
say?"

He knew she earned her daily bread; sometimes this had seemed to vex
and annoy him, but it must be done; and when a thing was inevitable,
it was not Mr. Lyon's way to say much about it. But being a governess
was an accredited and customary mode of a young lady's earning her
livelihood. This was different. If he should think it too public, too
unfeminine: he had such a horror of a woman's being any thing but a
woman, as strong and brave as she could, but in a womanly way; doing
any thing, however painful, that she was obliged to do, but never out
of choice or bravado, or the excitement of stepping out of her own
sphere into man's. Would Robert Lyon think less of her, Hilary,
because she had to earn to take care of herself, to protect herself,