hat's the one thing I couldn't bear. If you're not, I'm not.
There's no reason to be unhappy about me. I'm very cheerful indeed if I
know that you are all right. You are all right, aren't you? I do want
to know what happened when you got home. I quite understand that the
one thing you must do now is to keep your father well and not let
anything trouble him. If the thought of me troubles him, then tell him
that you are thinking of nothing but him now and how to make him happy.
But don't let them change your feeling for me. You know me better than
any of them do and I am just as you know me, every bit. The aunts are
very angry because they say I deceived them, but they haven't any right
to tell me who I shall love, have they? No one has. I am myself and
nobody's ever cared for me except you--and Uncle Mathew, so I don't see
why I should think of anybody. The aunts never cared for me
really--only to make me religious.

But, Martin, never forget I love you so much I can never change. I'm
not one who changes, and although I'm young now I shall be just the
same when I'm old. I have the ring and I look at it all the time. I
like to think you have the locket. Please write, dear Martin, or I'll
find it very difficult to stay quiet here, and I know I ought to stay
quiet for your sake.

Your loving,

MAGGIE.

She put it in an envelope, wrote the address as he had told her, and
then set out to find Jane. It was four o'clock in the afternoon now and
the house, on this winter's day, was dark and dim.

The gas was always badly lit in the passages, spitting and muttering
like an imprisoned animal. The house was so quiet when Maggie came out
on to the stairs that there seemed to be no one in it. She found her
way down into the hall and saw Thomas the cat there, moving like a
black ghost along the floor. He came up to her and rubbed himself in
his sinister, mysterious way against her dress. When she turned towards
the green baize door that led towards the kitchen regions he stood back
from her, stole on to the lower steps of the staircase and watched her
with steady, unblinking eyes. She pushed the door and went through into
the cold passage that smelt of cheese and bacon and damp earth. There
seemed to be no one about, and then suddenly the pantry door opened and
Jane came out. She stopped when she saw Maggie.

"Where's Martha?" asked Maggie in a low voice.

The whisper seemed to tell Jane at once that this was to be a
confiden