"Has old Louisa gone, then?"
"No," Aunt Lavvy said. She added presently, "That is Aunt Charlotte's maid."
IV.
Aunt Charlotte looked out through the bars of the old nursery window. She nodded to Mary and called to her to come up.
Aunt Lavvy said it did her good to see people.
There was a door at the head of the stairs, in a matchboard partition that walled the well of the staircase. You rang a bell. The corridor was very dark. Another partition with a door in it shut off the servants' rooms and the back staircase. They had put the big yellow linen cupboard before the tall window, the one she used to hang out of.
Some of the old things had been left in the nursery schoolroom, so that it looked much the same. Britton, the maid, sat in Jenny's low chair by the fireguard. Aunt Charlotte sat in an armchair by the window.
Her face was thin and small; the pencil lines had deepened; the long black curls hung from a puff of grey hair rolled back above her ears. Her eyes pointed at you—pointed. They had more than ever their look of wisdom and excitement. She was twisting and untwisting a string of white tulle round a sprig of privet flower.
"Don't you believe a word of it," she said. "Your father hasn't gone.
He's here in this house. He's in when Victor's out.
"He says he's sold the house to Victor. That's a lie. He doesn't want it known that he's hidden me here to prevent my getting married."