THE END OF THE SCENE I The linen money-bag and the account-book, proper to the last Wednesday in the month, lay on the green damask cloth of the round table where Hilda and her mother took their meals.

A paralytic stroke had not been drastic enough to mar Mr.Skellorn's most precious reputation for probity and reliability.

His statement of receipts and expenditure, together with the corresponding cash, had been due at two o'clock, and despite the paralytic stroke it was less than a quarter of an hour late.
On one side of the bag and the book were ranged the older women,--Mrs.
Lessways, thin and vivacious, and Mrs.Grant, large and solemn; and on the other side, as it were in opposition, the young, dark, slim girl with her rather wiry black hair, and her straight, prominent eyebrows, and her extraordinary expression of uncompromising aloofness.
"She's just enjoying it, that's what she's doing!" said Hilda to herself, of Mrs.Grant.
And the fact was that Mrs.Grant, quite unconsciously, did appear to be savouring the catastrophe with pleasure.

Although paralytic strokes were more prevalent at that period than now, they constituted even then a striking dramatic event.

Moreover, they were considered as direct visitations of God.