He clung to his decision with the utmost resolve as though it were his last plank of respectability.
"I can't believe," he said to her with great solemnity, "that things can really go wrong. I know too much. It isn't men like me who go under. No. No."
He saw then her white face and strange grey ghostly eyes as though her soul had gone somewhere on a visit and the house was untenanted. He felt again the gulp in his throat. He bent forward, resting his fat podgy hand on her knee.
"Don't you worry, Maggie dear. I've always noticed that things are never bad for long. You've still got your old uncle, and you're young, and there are plenty of fish in the sea ... there are indeed. You cheer up! It will be all right soon."
She put her hands on his.
"Oh I'm not—worrying." But as she spoke a strange strangled little sob had crept unbidden into her throat, choking her.
He thought, as he got up, "It's that damned young feller I gave dinner to. I'd like to wring his neck."
But he said no more, bent closer and kissed her, said he was soon coming again, and went away.
After he had gone the house sank into its grey quiet again. What was Maggie thinking? No one knew. What was Aunt Anne thinking? No one knew ... But there was something between these two, Maggie and Aunt Anne. Every one felt it and longed for the storm to burst. Bad enough things outside with Mr. Warlock dead, members leaving right and left, and the Chapel generally going to wrack and ruin, but inside!
Old Martha, who had never liked Maggie, felt now a strange, uncomfortable pity for her. She didn't want to feel pity, no, not she, pity for no one, and especially not for an ugly untidy girl like that, but there it was, she couldn't help herself! Such a child that girl, and she'd been as nearly dead as nothing, and now she was suffering, suffering awful ... Any one could see ... All that Warlock boy. Martha had seen him come stumbling down the stairs that day and had heard Maggie's cry and then the fall. Awful noise it made. Awful. She'd stood in the hall, looking up the stairs, her heart beating like a hammer. Yes, just like a hammer! Then she'd gone up. It wasn't a nice sight, the poor girl all in a lump on the floor and Miss Anne just as she always looked before one of her attacks, as though she were made of grey glass from top to toe ...