She was as if she had never been.
Presently she found herself entering her own house. It was all shut and
silent,--not a window lighted along the whole front of the house which
used to twinkle and glitter with lights. It soothed her somewhat to see
this, as if in evidence that the place had changed with her. She went in
silently, and the darkness was as day to her. Her own rooms were all shut
up, yet were open to her steps, which no external obstacle could limit.
There was still the sound of life below stairs, and in the housekeeper's
room a cheerful party gathered round the fire. It was then that she
turned first, with some wistful human attraction, towards the warmth and
light rather than to the still places in which her own life had been
passed. Mrs. Prentiss, the housekeeper, had her daughter with her on a
visit, and the daughter's baby lay asleep in a cradle placed upon two
chairs, outside the little circle of women round the table, one of whom
was Jervis, Lady Mary's maid. Jervis sat and worked and cried, and mixed
her words with little sobs. "I never thought as I should have had to take
another place," she said. "Brown and me, we made sure of a little
something to start upon. He's been here for twenty years, and so have
you, Mrs. Prentiss; and me, as nobody can say I wasn't faithful night and
day.
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