before the fire; he was wearing
faded brown slippers that flapped at his heels; his white hair was
tangled; his legs were crossed, the fat broad thighs pressing out
against the shiny black cloth of his trousers. He was chuckling over an
instalment of Anthony Trollope's "Brown Jones and Robinson" in a very
ancient Cornhill.

He looked up, "Maggie, you know it's my
sermon-morning--interruptions--" He had dropped the Cornhill, but not
fast enough to hide it from her.

She looked around at the dirty untidiness of the study. "It's all my
fault, this," she thought. "I should have kept him clean and neat and
keen on his work. I haven't. I've failed."

Then her next thought was: "Grace wouldn't let me--"

The study, in fact, was more untidy than ever, the pictures were back
in their places whence Maggie had once removed them.

Husband and wife looked at one another. If she felt: "I've not managed
my duty," he felt perhaps: "What a child she is after all!" But between
them there was the gulf of their past experience.

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said, yawning. "Is she an old lady?"

"No, she's not," said Maggie, breathing very quickly. "I love her very
much. I've been thinking, Paul, I've not been good about my relations
all this time. I ought to have seen them more. I must go up to London
at once."

"If your aunt's bad and wants you, I suppose you must," he answered. He
got up and came over to her. He kissed her suddenly.

"You'll be wanting some money," he said. "Don't be long away. I'll miss
you."

She caught the 2.30 train. It seemed very strange to her to be sitting
in it alone after the many months when she had been always either with
Grace or Paul. An odd sense of adventure surrounded her, and she felt
as though she were now at last approaching the climax to which the slow
events of the last two years had been leading. When she had been a
little girl one of the few interesting books in the house had been The
Mysteries of Udulpho. She could see the romance now, with its four
dumpy volumes, the F's so confusingly like S's, the faded print, and
the yellowing page.

She could remember little enough of it, but there had been one scene
near the beginning of the story when the heroine, Emily, looking for
something in the dusk, had noticed some lines pencilled on the
wainscot; these mysterious pencilled lines had been the beginning of
all her troubles, and Maggie, as a small girl, had approached sometimes
in the