esolate pang Maggie suspected that Uncle Mathew was the only
person who would ever understand her. Well, then, she must train
herself.

She would close doors, turn out lights, put things back where she found
them, mend her clothes, keep accounts. Indeed a new life was beginning
for her. She felt, with a sudden return to the days before her walk on
the moor, that if only her aunts would love her she would improve much
more rapidly. And then with her new independence she assured herself
that if they did not love her she most certainly would not love them ...

That night she sat opposite her aunt beside the fire. The house lay
dead and empty behind them. Aunt Anne was so neat in her thin black
silk, her black shining hair, her pale pointed face, a little round
white locket rising and falling ever so slowly with the lift of her
breast. There were white frills to her sleeves, and she read a slim
book bound in purple leather. Her body never moved; only once and again
her thin, delicate hand ever so gently lifted, turned a page, then
settled down on to her lap once more. She never raised her eyes.

The fire was heavy and sullen; the wind howled; that old familiar
beating of the twigs upon the pane seemed to reiterate to Maggie that
this was her last evening. She pretended to read. She had found a heavy
gilt volume of Paradise Lost with Dore's pictures. She read these words:

Beyond this flood a frozen Continent Lies dark and wilde, beat with
perpetual storms Of whirlwind and dire hail; which on firm land Thaws
not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems Of ancient pile; all else deep
snow and ice, A gulf profound as that Serbonian bay Betwixt Damiata and
Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk; the parching Air Burns
froze, and cold performs the effect of Fire.

Further again, words caught her eye.

Thus roving on In confused march forlorn, th' adventurous Bands With
shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast Viewed first their lamentable
lot, and found No rest; through many a dark and drearie Vaile They
passed, and many a Region dolorous. O'er many a frozen, many a fiery
Alpe, Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens and shades of death, A
Universe of death, which God by curse Created evil, for evil only good
Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breaks Perverse, all
monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse
Than Fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, Gorgons, and Hydras,
and Chimaeras