The girl grasped her hand, and pushed her back into the room.
"Maggie, I——Hark! there it is again! There's something outside—there, in the garden! If you open the window——"
As she spoke, Mrs. Dennison darted quick on silent naked feet to the window, and stood by it; but she seemed rather to intercept approach to it than to think of opening it. Indeed there was no need. The slow uncertain step sounded again; there were five or six seeming footfalls, and the women stood motionless, listening to them. Then there was stillness outside, matching the hush within; till Maggie Dennison, tearing the wrapper loose from her throat, said in low tones,
"I hear nothing outside;" and she put the candle on the table by her. "You can see nothing for the fog," she added as she gazed through the glass. Her tone was strangely full of relief.
"I opened the window," whispered Marjory, "and I saw—I thought I saw—something. And then I heard—that. You heard it, Maggie?"
The girl was standing in the middle of the room, her eyes fixed on Mrs. Dennison, who leant against the window-sash with a strained, alert, watchful look on her face.
"I heard you open the window and call out something," she said. "That's all I heard."
"But just now—just now as we stood here?"
Mrs. Dennison did not answer for a moment; her ear was almost against the panes, and her face was like a runner's as he waits for the starter's word. There was nothing but the gentle beat of the sea. Mrs. Dennison pushed her hair back over her shoulders and sighed; her tense frame relaxed, and the fixed smile on her lips seemed, in broadening, to lose something of its rigidity.
"No, I didn't, you silly child," she said. "You're full of fancies, Marjory."