asts, the mouth resolute and determined. She
had now the fine expectation of her youth, her health, her optimism,
her ignorance of the world. When these things left her she would
perhaps be a yet plainer woman. In her dress she was not clever. Her
clothes were ugly with the coarse drab grey of their material and the
unskilful workmanship that had created them. And yet there would be
some souls who would see in her health, her youth, the kind sympathy of
her eyes and mouth, the high nobility of her forehead from which her
hair was brushed back, an attraction that might hold them more deeply
than an obvious beauty.

Uncle Mathew although he was a silly man was one of these perceptive
souls, and had he not been compelled by his circumstances to think
continually about himself, would have loved his niece very dearly. As
it was, he thought her a fine girl when he thought of her at all, and
wished her more success in life than her "poor old uncle" had had. He
looked at her now across the fireplace with satisfaction. She was
something sure and pleasant in a world that swayed and was uncertain.
He was drunk enough to feel happy so long as he was not scolded. He
dreaded the moment when his brother Charles would appear, and he strove
to arrange in his mind the wise and unanswerable word with which he
would defend himself, but his thoughts slipped just as the firelight
slipped and the floors with the old threadbare carpet.

Then suddenly the hall door opened with a jangle, there were steps in
the hall, and Old Timmie Carthewe the sexton appeared in the
dining-room. He had a goat's face and a body like a hairpin.

"Rector's not been to service," he said. "There's Miss Dunnett and Mrs.
Giles and the two Miss Backshaws. I'm feared he's forgotten."

Maggie started up. Instantly to her mind came the memory of that
fancied sound from her father's room. She listened now, her head
raised, and the two men, their eyes bleared but their noses sniffing as
though they were dogs, listened also. There were certain sounds, clocks
ticking, the bough scraping on the wall, a cart's echo on the frozen
road, the maid singing far in the depths of the house. Maggie nodded
her head.

"I'll go and see," she said.

She went into the hall and stood again listening. Then she called,
"Father! Father!" but there was no answer. She had never in all her
life been frightened by anything and she was not frightened now;
nevertheless, as she went up the stair