She was a very attractive girl, with fair hair and pretty eyes, made for affection and to take a spoiling prettily.  At present she had no misgiving about her lover’s good intentions, and this gave her the confidence which naturally she lacked.  Besides, she had never thought Anne Hilton important.  Anne, seeing the handsome room, the gaiety of Jane, and affection of Burton, found herself wishing that there were no reason why it should not continue so, to all appearance a happy home of newly-married people.  She saw none of the signs of shame in Jane which she herself had suffered.

“I’ve not just come to pay you a visit, Jane, my dear,” she said.  “I’ve come in the place of your grandmother who’s dead, to take you away with me.”

“Whatever for?” exclaimed Burton, loudly.  “Do you think I can’t make her comfortable?  She’s never been so happy in her life, have you, Jane?”

“No!” returned Jane, very red.  “And I don’t see what Miss Hilton’s got to do with it anyway.”

“No more don’t I,” returned Burton, with a laugh.  “But let’s hear what she’s got to say about it.  So you want Jane to go back to starving at dressmaking, Miss Hilton?  She’s a lot more comfortable here, I can tell you.  She’s got a servant, and she can have her dresses made out.  She’s no need to do anything but fancy work.”

“It’s the sin of a good, respectable girl taking such things for a price,” interrupted Anne, “and of you, Mr Burton, to entice her to it, and keep her like this.  It’s not on you the judgment’ll fall, but on her.  How’s she to face the neighbours and everybody she’s known from a child when you’ve done with her?”

“I’ve not done with her yet by a good way,” said Burton.  “Don’t you worry yourself, Miss Hilton.”

“You’re a man of money and position, and a newcomer in the neighbourhood,” went on Anne, “and the neighbours are afraid to say anything before you.  But they say plenty about Jane, whom they’ve known all their life.  Young people she used to play with talk of her with shame, and when you’ve finished with her she’ll not have a friend to go to.”

“But I tell you I’ve not done with her yet, and shan’t for many a good while,” repeated Burton.  “I dare say she’ll be tired first if it comes to that.”

“Can you ever give her back what you’ve taken from her?” asked Anne breathlessly, trying to pierce the self-confidence she did not understand.

“Well, it was something like slaving all one day and then starving the next before,” said Burton, “and she lives like a lady now.  You should just see the fancy-work she gets through—­no dressmaking now!”

Anne turned to Jane, who was sitting flushed and resentfully embarrassed in the satin armchair, looking expectantly to Richard to see her through, shocked, too, and ready to cry at this first contact and opinion of her neighbours upon her doings.

“Where’s your sister Lizzie, Jane?” she asked.