Her mind went back inevitably to St. Dreot's church, her father, Ellen the cook. That was what the history of the spirit had been to her so far. What reason had she to suppose that this was any more real than that had been? Nevertheless, when at the end of the sermon she left the building and went once more into the soaking streets some sense of expectation was with her, so that she hastened into her aunt's house as though she would find that some strange event had occurred in her absence.
Nothing, of course, had occurred.
During the afternoon the rain ceased to fall and a dim, grey light, born of an intense silence, enveloped the town. About three o'clock the aunts went out to some religious gathering and Maggie was left to herself. She discovered in Aunt Elizabeth's bedroom a bound volume of Good Words, and with this seated herself by the drawing-room fire. Soon she slept.
She was awakened by a consciousness that some one was in the room and, sitting up, staring through the gloom, heard a movement near the door, a rustle, a little jingle, a laugh.
"Is any one there?" said a high, shrill voice.
Maggie got up.
"I'm here," she said.
Some one came forward; it was the girl of the blue dress who had smiled at Maggie in chapel. She held out her hand—"I hope you don't think me too awful. My name's Caroline Smith. How do you do?"
They shook hands. Maggie, still bewildered by sleep, said, stammering, "Won't you sit down? I beg your pardon. My aunts—"
"Oh, it isn't the aunts I wanted to see," replied Miss Smith, laughing so that a number of little bracelets jingled most tunefully together. "I came to see you. We smiled at one another in chapel. It was your first time, wasn't it? Didn't you think it all awfully quaint?"