A few minutes afterwards I heard the motor-car turning and driving away.
The wind had fallen, the waves were rolling into the harbour with that monotonous moan which is the sea's memory of a storm, and a full moon, like a white-robed queen, was riding through a troubled sky.
THIRTY-EIGHTH CHAPTER
The moon had died out; a new day had dawned; the sea was lying as quiet as a sleeping child; far out on the level horizon the sky was crimsoning before the rising sun, and clouds of white sea-gulls were swirling and jabbering above the rocks in the harbour below the house before I lay down to sleep.
I was awakened by a hurried knocking at my door, and by an impatient voice crying:
"Mary! Mary! Get up! Let me in!"
It was Aunt Bridget who had arrived in my husband's automobile. When I opened the door to her she came sailing into the room with her new half-moon bonnet a little awry, as if she had put it on hurriedly in the dim light of early morning, and, looking at me with her cold grey eyes behind their gold-rimmed spectacles, she began to bombard me with mingled ridicule and indignant protest.
"Goodness me, girl, what's all this fuss about? You little simpleton, tell me what has happened!"
She was laughing. I had hardly ever heard Aunt Bridget laugh before. But her vexation soon got the better of her merriment.