The fear of this future combined with the acute discomfort of the present to make her desperate.  She cast about for a way of escape, a pathway to the sun.  One only offered—­the landlord.

He was an elderly landlord, who had lately buried a frumpy old wife, and he was as deeply tainted with trade as Peter Breen; but he had retired long since from personal connection with breweries and public-houses—­and a brewer, in the social scale, was only just below a wholesale importer, if that—­and he was manifestly rolling in money, after the manner of his kind.  Half the streets around belonged to him, and his house towered up in the midst of his other houses, a great white block, with a pillared portico—­a young palace by comparison.  Above all, he had no known children.

From the first he had taken an interest in his pretty girl-tenants.  He had liked to call in person to inquire if the cellar kept dry and the chimney had ceased smoking; and he had been most generous in offering improvements and repairs before they were even asked for.  Deb had blighted these unbusiness-like overtures on her own account, and Frances herself had said the rudest things about them and him—­but not lately.  In the utter dullness and barrenness of her life, she had been glad to accept the civilities of anything in the shape of a man—­to try her ’prentice hand on any material.  All the armoury of the born beauty was hers, and she knew as well how to use each weapon effectively as a blind kitten knows how to suck milk.  They were easily successful with the old fool, who is ever more of a fool than the young fool; and when she found that, she found something to entertain her.  She not only received Mr Ewing when he called, but talked to him at the gate when he went past—­and he went past several times a day.  Now, when the situation at home had grown desperate, and she was looking all ways for means to save herself, his amusing infatuation became a matter for serious thought.  Could she?  She was a hard case, but even she wavered.  He was probably sixty, and she was eighteen.  Oh, she couldn’t!  But when, after Miss Keene’s departure, Deb told her they could no longer afford hired help, and that she (Frances) must give up her lazy ways and take her share of that intolerable housework, then Frances changed her mind.  Beggars could not be choosers.

Deb felt like the camel under the last straw when the announcement of the proposed marriage was made to her.  It was worse than Mary’s—­worse than Rose’s—­worse than any other misfortune that had befallen the family.  She sat down and wept at the thought of what the Pennycuicks had come to.  She rated Frances furiously; she reasoned with her; she pleaded with her; she tried to bribe her; but Frances was getting boxes of diamonds, and sets of furs and lace, and what not, and it was useless for Deb to attempt to outbid the giver of these things, or to part her sister from them.  She loved the