Grace paused as though she were going to speak, then turned on her heel. But just as she reached the sitting-room door she said, breathing heavily:
"There's a telegram for you there."
Maggie saw it lying on the table. She picked it up and hesitated. A wild beating of the heart told her that it must be from Martin. She didn't know what told her this except that now for so long she had been expecting to see a telegram lying in just this way on the table, waiting for her. She took it up with a hand that trembled. She tore it open and read:
"Come at once. Your aunt dying. Wishes to see you. Magnus."
No need to ask which aunt. When one aunt was mentioned it was Aunt Anne—of course. Oh, poor Aunt Anne! Maggie longed for her, longed to be with her, longed to be kind to her, longed to comfort her. And Mr. Magnus and Martha and Aunt Elizabeth and the cat—she must go at once, she must catch a train after luncheon.
She went impetuously into her husband's study.
"Oh, Paul!" she cried. "Aunt Anne's dying, and I must go to her at once."
Paul was sitting in his old armchair before the fire; he was wearing faded brown slippers that flapped at his heels; his white hair was tangled; his legs were crossed, the fat broad thighs pressing out against the shiny black cloth of his trousers. He was chuckling over an instalment of Anthony Trollope's "Brown Jones and Robinson" in a very ancient Cornhill.
He looked up, "Maggie, you know it's my sermon-morning—interruptions—" He had dropped the Cornhill, but not fast enough to hide it from her.
She looked around at the dirty untidiness of the study. "It's all my fault, this," she thought. "I should have kept him clean and neat and keen on his work. I haven't. I've failed."