s Maggie with
decent people. He reasoned farther that such an arrangement could only be
possible, given the complete rupture of their relations.

A clean, kindly woman opened the door. She admitted with some show of
hesitation that Miss Forrest was at home, and led him to a sitting-room
on the upper floor. As he followed her he heard a door open; a dress
rustled on the landing, and another door opened and shut again.

Maggie was not in the room as Majendie entered. From signs of recent
occupation he gathered that she had risen up and fled at his approach.

The woman went into the adjoining room and returned, politely
embarrassed. "Miss Forrest is very sorry, sir, but she can't see
anybody."

He wrote his name on Gorst's card and sent her back with it.

Then Maggie came to him.

He remembered long afterwards the manner of her coming; how he heard her
blow her poor nose outside the door before she entered; how she stood on
the threshold and looked at him, and made him a stiff little bow; how she
approached shyly and slowly, with her arms hanging awkwardly at her
sides, and her eyes fixed on him in terror, as if she were drawn to him
against her will; how she held Gorst's card tight in her poor little
hand; how her eyes had foreknowledge of his errand and besought him to
spare her; and how in her awkwardness she yet preserved her inimitable
grace.

He could hardly believe that this was the girl he had once seen in
Evans's shop when he was buying flowers for Anne. The girl in Evans's
shop was only a pretty girl. Maggie, at five-and-twenty, living under
Gorst's "protection," and attired according to his taste, was almost
(but not quite) a pretty lady. Maggie was neither inhumanly tall, nor
inhumanly slender; she was simply and supremely feminine. She was dressed
delicately in black, a choice which made brilliant the beauty of her
colouring. Her hair was abundant, fawn-dark, laced with gold. Her face
was a full short oval. Its whiteness was the tinged whiteness of pure
cream, with a rose in it that flamed, under Maggie's swift emotions, to a
sudden red. She had soft grey eyes dappled with a tawny green. Her little
high-arched nose was sensitive to the constant play of her upper lip; and
that lip was so short that it couldn't always cover the tips of her
little white teeth. Majendie judged that Maggie's mouth was the prettiest
feature in her face, and there was something about it that reminded him,
preposterously, of A