s, she looked behind her to see
whether any one followed her.

She called again "Father!" then went to his door, pushed it open, and
looked in. The room was cold with a faint scent of tallow candle and
damp.

In the twilight she saw her father's body lying like a shadow stretched
right across the floor, with the grey dirty fingers of one hand
clenched.

After that events followed swiftly. Maggie herself had no time nor
opportunity for any personal emotion save a dumb kind of wonder that
she did not feel more. But she saw all "through a glass darkly." There
had been first that moment when the sexton and Uncle Mathew, still like
dogs sniffing, had peered with their eyes through her father's door.
Then there had been the summoning of Dr. Bubbage from the village, his
self-importance, his continual "I warned him. I warned him. He can't
say I didn't warn him," and then (very dim and far away) "Thank you,
Miss Cardinal. I think I will have a glass if you don't mind." There
had been cook crying in the kitchen (her red roses intended for Sunday
must now be postponed) and the maid sniffing in the hall. There had
been Uncle Mathew, muddled and confused, but clinging to his one idea
that "the best thing you can do, my dear, is to send for your Aunt
Anne." There had been the telegram dispatched to Aunt Anne, and then
after that the house had seemed quite filled with people--ladies who
had--wished to know whether they could help her in any way and even the
village butcher who was there for no reason but stood in the hall
rubbing his hands on his thighs and sniffing. All these persons Maggie
surveyed through a mist. She was calm and collected and empty of all
personality; Maggie Cardinal, the real Maggie Cardinal, was away on a
visit somewhere and would not be back for a time or two.

Then suddenly as the house had filled so suddenly it emptied. Maggie
found that she was desperately tired. She went to bed and slept
instantly. On waking next morning she was aware that it was a most
beautiful winter's day and that there was something strange in the air.
There came to her then very slowly a sense of her father. She saw him
on the one side, persistently as she had found him in his room,
strange, shapeless, with a crumpled face and a dirty beard that seemed
to be more dead than the rest of him. On the other side she saw him as
she had found him in the first days of her consciousness of the world.

He must have been "jolly" then, lar