
    »Yes, Philip,« she said, with her childish contrition when he used to chide
her, »you are right, I know. I do always think too much of my own feelings, and
not enough of others' - not enough of yours. I had need have you always to find
fault with me and teach me: so many things have come true that you used to tell
me.«
    Maggie was resting her elbow on the table, leaning her head on her hand and
looking at Philip with half-penitent dependent affection, as she said this;
while he was returning her gaze with an expression that, to her consciousness,
gradually became less vague - became charged with a specific recollection. Had
his mind flown back to something that she now remembered? - something about a
lover of Lucy's? It was a thought that made her shudder: it gave new
definiteness to her present position, and to the tendency of what had happened
the evening before. She moved her arm from the table, urged to change her
position by that positive physical oppression at the heart that sometimes
accompanies a sudden mental pang.
    »What is the matter, Maggie? Has something happened?« Philip said, in
inexpressible anxiety - his imagination being only too ready to weave everything
that was fatal to them both.
    »No - nothing,« said Maggie, rousing her latent will. Philip must not have
that odious thought in his mind: she would banish it from her own. »Nothing,«
she repeated, »except in my own mind. You used to say I should feel the effect
of my starved life, as you called it, and I do. I am too eager in my enjoyment
of music and all luxuries, now they are come to me.«
    She took up her work and occupied herself resolutely, while Philip watched
her, really in doubt whether she had anything more than this general allusion in
her mind. It was quite in Maggie's character to be agitated by vague
self-reproach. But soon there came a violent well-known ring at the door-bell
resounding through the house.
    »O what a startling announcement!« said Maggie, quite mistress of herself,
though not without some inward flutter. »I wonder where Lucy is.«
    Lucy had not been deaf to the signal, and after an interval long enough for
a few solicitous but not hurried inquiries, she herself ushered Stephen in.
    »Well, old fellow,« he said, going straight up to Philip and shaking him
heartily by the hand, bowing to
