ant dislike, and Amy Warlock. She visited these people
and they visited her; for the rest she seemed to take no exercise, and
her declared love for the country did not lead her into the Parks. She
was more silent, if possible, than she had been at St. Dreots, and read
to herself a great deal in the dark and melancholy drawing-room.
Although she talked very little to Maggie, the girl fancied that her
eye was always upon her. There was a strange attitude of watchfulness
in her silent withdrawal from her scene as though she had retired
simply because she could see the better from a distance.

She liked Maggie to read the Bible to her, and for an hour of every
evening Maggie did this. For some reason the girl greatly disliked this
hour and dreaded its approach. It was perhaps because it seemed to
bring before her the figure of her father, the words as they fell from
her lips seemed to be repeated by him as he stood behind her. Nothing
was more unexpected by her than the way that those last days at St.
Dreots crowded about her. They should surely have been killed by the
colours and interests of this new life. It appeared that they were only
accentuated by them. Especially did she see that night when she had
watched beside her father's dead body ... she saw the stirring of the
beard, the shape of the feet beneath the sheet, the flicker of the
candle. Apart from this one hour of the day, however, she was happy,
excited, expectant. What it was that she expected she did not exactly
know, but there were so many things that life might now do for her. One
thing that very evidently it did not intend to do for her was to make
her tidy, careful, and a good manager. Old Martha, the Cardinal
servant, was her sworn enemy, and, indeed, with reason. It seemed that
Maggie could not remember the things that she was told: lighted lamps
were left long after they should have been extinguished, one night the
bathroom was drowned in water by a running tap, her clothes were not
mended, she was never punctual at meal-times. And yet no one could call
her a dreamy child. She could, about things that interested her, be
remarkably sharp and penetrating. She had a swift and often successful
intuition about characters; facts and details about places or people
she never forgot. She had a hard, severe, entirely masculine sense of
independence, an ironic contempt for sentimentality, a warm, ardent
loyalty and simplicity in friendship. Her carelessness in all