simply for rest and quiet
and pure air, and we got what we wanted.

"Well, one evening about the middle of March I was up in my room
dressing for dinner, and just as I had about finished dressing, my
sister Helen came in. I remember her saying as she came in, 'Aren't you
ready yet, Maggie? Are you making yourself extra smart for Mr. Conroy?'
Mr. Conroy was the clergyman; he was dining with us that night. And then
Helen looked at me and found fault with me, half in fun of course, for
not having put on a prettier dress. I remember I said it was good enough
for Mr. Conroy, who was no favourite of mine; but Helen wasn't satisfied
till I agreed to wear a bright scarlet neck-ribbon of hers, and she ran
off to her room to fetch it. I followed her almost immediately. Her room
and mine, I must, by the bye, explain, were at extreme ends of a passage
several yards in length. There was a wall on one side of this passage,
and a balustrade overlooking the staircase on the other. My room was at
the end nearest the top of the staircase. There were no doors along the
passage leading to Helen's room, but just beside her door, at the end,
was that of the unused room I told you of, filled with the old furniture.
The passage was lighted from above by a skylight--I mean, it was by no
means dark or shadowy--and on the evening I am speaking of, it was still
clear daylight. We dined early at Ballyreina; I don't think it could
have been more than a quarter to five when Helen came into my room.
Well, as I was saying, I followed her almost immediately, so quickly
that as I came out of my room I was in time to catch sight of her as
she ran along the passage, and to see her go into her own room. Just
as I lost sight of her--I was coming along more deliberately, you
understand--suddenly, how or when exactly I cannot tell, I perceived
_another_ figure walking along the passage in front of me. It was a
woman, a little thin woman, but though she had her back to me, something
in her gait told me she was not young. She seemed a little bent, and
walked feebly. I can remember her dress even now with the most perfect
distinctness. She had a gown of gray clinging stuff, rather scanty in
the skirt, and one of those funny little old-fashioned black shawls with
a sewed-on border, that you seldom see nowadays. Do you know the kind I
mean? It was a narrow, shawl-pattern border, and there was a short tufty
black fringe below the border. And she had a gray poke bonn