Breakfast was quiet and silent. Edward, who received apparently a larger meal on Sundays than at ordinary times, chattered happily to himself, and Maggie heard him say complacently, "Poor Parrot?—Poor Parrot. How do you do? How do you do?"
"Service is at eleven o'clock, dear," said Aunt Anne. "We leave the house at ten minutes to eleven."
Maggie, not knowing what to do with the hour in front of her, went up to her bedroom, found the servant making the bed, came down into the drawing-room and sat in a dark corner under a large bead mat, that, nailed to the wall, gave little taps and rustlings as though it were trying to escape.
She felt that she should be doing something, but what? She sat there, straining her ear for sounds. "One always seems to be expecting some one in this house," she thought. The weather that had been bright had now changed and little gusts of rain beat upon the windows. She thought with a sudden strange warmth of Uncle Mathew. What was he doing? Where was he? How pleasant it would be were he suddenly to walk into that chilly, dark room. She would not show him that she was lonely, but she would give him such a welcome as he had never had from her before. Had he money enough? Was he feeling perhaps as desolate amongst strangers as she? The rain tickled the window-panes. Maggie, with a desolation at her heart that she was too proud to own, sat there and waited.
She looked back afterwards upon that moment as the last shivering pause before she made that amazing plunge that was to give her new life.
The sound of a little forlorn bell suddenly penetrated the rain. It was just such a bell as rang every Sunday from chapels across the Glebeshire moors, and Maggie knew, when Aunt Elizabeth opened the door and looked in upon her, that the summons was for her.
"Oh! my dear (a favourite exclamation of Aunt Elizabeth's) and you're not ready. The bell's begun. The rain's coming down very hard, I'm afraid. It's only a step from our door. Your things, dear, as quick as you can."
The girl ran upstairs and, stayed by some sudden impulse, stood for a moment before the long mirror. It was as though she were imploring that familiar casual figure that she saw there not to leave her, the only friend she had in a world that was suddenly terrifying and alarming. Her old black dress that had seemed almost smart for the St. Dreot funeral now appeared most desperately shabby; she knew that her black hat was anything but attractive.
"What do I care for them all!" her heart said defiantly. "What do they matter to me!"
She marched out of the house behind the aunts with her head in the air, very conscious of a hole in one of her thin black gloves.