There was something very unpleasant about that room, with the yellow light, the hissing gas, and the immobile figure on the sofa. Maggie looked in the direction of old Mrs. Warlock.
"You needn't mind mother," said Amy Warlock. "For some time now she's been completely paralysed. She can't speak or move. But she likes to be downstairs, to see the world a bit. It's sad after the way that she used to enjoy life. Father's death was a great shock to her."
It was sad. Maggie remembered how fond she had been of her food. Like a waxen image! Like a waxen image! The whole room was ghoulish and unnatural.
"I've asked you to come and see me, Mrs. Trenchard," continued Miss Warlock, "not because we can have any wish to meet, I am sure. We have never liked one another. But I have something on my conscience, and I may not have another opportunity of speaking to you. I don't suppose you have heard that very shortly I intend to enter a nunnery at Roehampton."
"And your mother?" asked Maggie.
"Mother will go into a Home," answered Miss Warlock.
There was a strange little sound from the sofa like a rat nibbling behind the wainscot.
"I must tell you," said Miss Warlock, speaking apparently with some difficulty, "that I have done you a wrong. Shortly after my father's death my brother wrote to you from Paris."
"Wrote to me?" repeated Maggie.
"Yes—wrote to you through me. I destroyed the letters. He wrote then five times in rather swift succession. I destroyed all the letters."