At that date in Turnhill, as in many other towns of England, the poem had not yet lived down a reputation for immorality; but fortunately Mrs.Lessways had only the vaguest notion of its dangerousness, and was indeed a negligent kind of woman.

Dangerous the book was! Once in reciting it aloud in her room, Hilda had come so near to fainting that she had had to stop and lie down on the bed, until she could convince herself that she was not the male lover crying to his beloved.

An astounding and fearful experience, and not to be too lightly renewed! For Hilda, _Maud_ was a source of lovely and exquisite pain.
Why had she not used her force of character to obtain more books?
One reason lay in the excessive difficulty to be faced.

Birthdays are infrequent; and besides, the enterprise of purchasing _Maud_ had proved so complicated and tedious that Mrs.Lessways, with that curious stiffness which marked her sometimes, had sworn never to attempt to buy another book.

Turnhill, a town of fifteen thousand persons, had no bookseller; the only bookseller that Mrs.Lessways had ever heard of did business at Oldcastle.