dire.

She did not care for reading, most especially she did not care for
poetry, but to-night she saw the picture. Up to the very bounds of the
house this waste country, filled with beasts of prey, animals with
fiery eyes and incredible names, the long stretch of snow and ice, the
black water with no stars reflected in it, the wind.

A coal crashed in the fire; she gave a little cry.

"My dear, what is it?" said Aunt Anne. Then, with a little shake of her
shoulders, she added: "There's a horrid draught. Perhaps you forgot to
close the kitchen-door when you came away, Maggie dear."

Maggie flushed. Of course she had forgotten. She left the room, crossed
the hall. Yes, there was the door, wide open. She locked it, the place
was utterly cold and desolate. She closed the door, stood for a moment
in the little hall.

"I don't care what's going to happen!" she cried aloud. So ended her
life in that house.

CHAPTER III

THE LONDON HOUSE

It was strange after this that the start on the London journey should
be so curiously unexciting; it was perhaps the presence of Aunt Anne
that reduced everything to an unemotional level. Maggie wondered as she
sat in the old moth-eaten, whisky-smelling cab whether her Aunt Anne
was ever moved about anything. Then something occurred that showed her
that, as yet, she knew very little about her aunt. As, clamping down
the stony hill, they had a last glimpse at the corner of the two
Vicarage chimneys, looking above the high hedge like a pair of
inquisitive lunatics, Maggie choked. She pressed her hands together,
pushed her hair from her face and, in so doing, touched her black hat.

"Your hat's crooked, Maggie dear," said her aunt gently. The girl's hot
hands clutched the soft packet of sandwiches and a little black handbag
that yesterday Aunt Anne had bought for her in the village. It was a
shabby little bag, and had strange habits of opening when it was not
expected to do so and remaining shut when something was needed from it.
It gaped now and, just as the cab climbed Cator Hill, it fell forward
and flung the contents on to the floor. Maggie, blushing, looked up
expecting a reproof. She saw that her aunt's eyes were fixed upon the
view; as upon the day of her arrival, so now. Her face wore a look of
rapture. She drank it in.

Maggie also took the last joy of the familiar scene. The Vicarage, like
a grey crouching cat, lay basking on the green hill. The sunlight
flooded th