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 naive 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.