comfort and quiet and kind
smiling clergyman--and there was this strange place with all of them in
an odd quiver of excitement waiting for something to happen. But she
couldn't speak to him about that, she couldn't say anything to him at
all. He cleared his throat as though he were embarrassed and were
conscious that he had been making a fool of himself. Maggie felt that
he was disappointed in her. She was sorry for that, but she was as she
was.

"Well, I'm glad you're happy," he said, looking at her wistfully. He
got up and stood awkwardly looking at her.

"I want you to promise me something," he said, "that's really what I
came for. I want you to promise that you won't in any case leave your
aunts before the New Year."

She got up, looked at him and gave him her hand.

"Yes," she said. "I promise that."

The year had only a week or two more to run and she was not afraid of
that little space of time. He seemed to want to say something more, but
after hesitating he suddenly made a bolt for the door and she could
hear him stumbling downstairs.

She forgot him almost as soon as he had left the house, but his words
nevertheless brought her to consider her aunts. Next morning at
breakfast time she had a further reason to consider them. Aunt
Elizabeth met her, when she came downstairs, with a very grave face.

"Your aunt's had a terrible night," she said. "She's insisted on coming
downstairs--I told her not. She never listens to anything I say."

Maggie could see that something more than ordinary had occurred. Aunt
Elizabeth was on the edge of tears, and in so confused a state of mind
that she put sugar into her egg, and then ate it with a puzzled air as
though she could not be sure why it tasted so strange. When Aunt Anne
came in it was plain enough that she had wrestled with demons during
the night. Maggie had often seen her before battling with pain and
refusing to be defeated. Now she looked as though she had but risen
from the dead. It was a ghost in very truth that stood there; a ghost
in black silk dress with white wristbands and a stiff white collar,
black hair, so tightly drawn back and ordered that it was like a
shining skull-cap. Her face was white, with the effect of a chalk
drawing into which live, black, burning eyes had been stuck. But it was
none of these things that frightened Maggie. It was the expression
somewhere in the mouth, in the eyes, in the pale bony hands, that spoke
of some meeting with