She went quickly to the bell and rang it; standing there waiting, with beating heart and face suddenly gone white. …
“Susan,” she said, “there is an old gentleman at the gate. Go out and see who it is. … Stop: if it is anyone for me … if—if he gives the name of Mr. Cathcart, ask him to be so kind as to go round the turn to the village and wait for me. … Susan, don’t say anything to Mrs. Baxter; it may just possibly be bad news.”
From behind the curtain she watched the maid go down the path, saw a few words pass between her and the stranger, and then the maid come back. She waited breathless.
“Yes, miss. It is a Mr. Cathcart. He said he would wait for you.”
Maggie nodded.
“I will go,” she said. “Remember, please do not say a word to anyone. It may be bad news, as I said.”
As she walked through the hamlet three minutes later, she began to recognize that the news must be really serious; and that beneath all her serenity she had been aware of its possibility. So intense now was that anxiety—though perfectly formless in its details—that all other faculties seemed absorbed into it. She could not frame any imagination as to what it meant; she could form no plan, alternative or absolute, as to what must be done. She was only aware that something had happened, and that she would know the facts in a few seconds.
About fifty yards up the turning she saw the old gentleman waiting. He was in his London clothes, silk-hatted and spatted, and made a curiously incongruous picture there in the deep-banked lane that led upwards to the village.
On either side towered the trees, still leafless, yet bursting with life; and overhead chattered the birds against the tender midday sky of spring.