It was not really a dark night, and she was able to see for some distance dimly, but the garden struck her as very still and lonely as she stood hesitating on the terrace. Nevertheless she must face those long lonely grass paths.
It was sometime before she caught sight of Meg sitting upon a garden seat, her arms flung round the back and her face hidden in them. She looked the picture of depression. She was still wearing her white evening dress and had no wrap of any kind over her.
Miss Gregson, afraid of startling the girl, called her name from a distance. To hear her own voice in that still garden sent a shiver into her heart.
Meg looked up at the sound, then let her head drop again on to her arms.
"My dear, you will catch cold," said Miss Gregson drawing near. "Do you know that it is past twelve?"
"I don't care if it is," answered the girl passionately, "let me be, I say. It ain't no business of yours that I can see." Meg had raised her head and sat looking defiantly at her companion.
Miss Gregson could hardly believe her ears. This was being natural with a vengeance! She had never heard the girl speak in so common a tone of voice before. She might have been talking to one of her acquaintances of old. But though it gave the good woman a shock, she knew that the fact of Meg taking no pains whatever either with her manner, tone of voice, or grammar, meant that she was in the deepest dejection, so deep that she did not care what anyone thought of her. Miss Gregson sat down by her side.
Then Meg whose head had sunk again after her words of passion, looked up.
"I don't advise you to come near me. I ain't fit for the company and friends of Sheila," she said, glaring fiercely at her companion. "I tell you I don't want to be fit either. I'm tired of it all. I'm going back to Jem and the rest of them."
"My dear child we can't spare you," said Miss Gregson laying her hand on Meg's arm.