Regularly each day, when the sun nears the western horizon, Maggie
steals away to the cottage, and the lonely woman, waiting for her on
the rude bench by the door, can tell her bounding footstep from all
others which pass that way. She does not say much now herself; but the
sound of Maggie's voice, talking to her in the gathering twilight, is
the sweetest she has ever heard; and so she sits and listens, while
her hands work nervously together, and her whole body trembles with a
longing, intense desire to clasp the young girl to her bosom and claim
her as her own. But this she dare not do, for Madam Conway's training
has had its effect, and in Maggie's bearing there is ever a degree of
pride which forbids anything like undue familiarity. And it was this
very pride which Hagar liked to see, whispering often to herself,
"Warren blood and Conway airs--the two go well together."
Sometimes a word or a look would make her start, they reminded her so
forcibly of the dead; and once she said involuntarily: "You are like
your mother, Maggie. Exactly what she was at your age."
"My mother!" answered Maggie. "You never talked to me of her; tell me
of her now. I did not suppose I was like her in anything."
"Yes, in everything," said old Hagar; "the same dark eyes and hair,
the same bright red cheeks, the same--"
"Why, Hagar, what can you mean?" interrupted Maggie. "My mother had
light blue eyes and fair brown hair, like Theo.
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