m if you ask me," said her uncle. "And it's had a
hardening effect on your aunts who were kind women once, but they're
completely in the hands of the blackguard who runs their chapel, poor
innocents. I'd wring his neck if I caught him."

All this was very fascinating to Maggie who was of a practical mind
with regard to the facts immediately before her but had beyond them a
lively imagination. Her life had been so lonely, spent for the most
part so far from children of her own age, that she had no test of
reality. She did not see any reason why the Lord God should not come
again and she saw every reason why her aunts should condemn her uncle.
That London house swam now in a light struck partly from the wisdom and
omniscience of her aunts, partly from God's threatened descent upon
them.

Aunt Anne's name was no longer mentioned in St. Dreot's but Maggie did
not forget, and at every new tyranny from her father she thought to
herself--"Well, there is London. I shall be there one day."

As they walked Maggie looked at her uncle. What was he really? He
should be a gentleman and yet he didn't look like one. She remembered
things that he had at different times said to her.

"Why, look at myself!" he had on earlier days, half-maudlin from "his
drop at the 'Bull and Bush,'" exclaimed to Maggie, "I can't call myself
a success! I'm a rotten failure if you want to know, and I had most
things in my favour to start with, went to Cambridge, had a good
opening as a barrister. But it wasn't quick enough for me. I was
restless and wanted to jump the moon--now look at me! Same with your
father, only he's put all his imagination into money--same as your
aunts have put theirs into religion. We're not like ordinary people, us
Cardinals."

"And have I got a lot of imagination too?" Maggie had asked on one
occasion.

"I'm sure I don't know," her uncle had answered her. "You don't look to
me like a Cardinal at all--much too quiet. But you may have it
somewhere. Look out for a bad time if you have."

Today Maggie's abrupt checking of his projects had made him sulky and
he talked but little. "Damn it all!" he had started out with the most
charming intentions towards the girl and now look at her! Was it
natural conduct in the day after she had lost her only protector? No,
it was not. Had she been pretty he might have, even now, forgiven her,
but today she looked especially plain with her pale face and shabby
black dress and her obstinate m