When the deed was accomplished and the room suddenly bright with soft
illumination, Mrs. Maldon murmured--

"That's better!"

She was sitting in her arm-chair by the glitteringly set table, which,
instead of being in the centre of the floor under the gas, had a place
near the bow-window--advantageous in the murky daytime of the Five
Towns, and inconvenient at night. The table might well have been
shifted at night to a better position in regard to the gas. But it
never was. Somehow for Mrs. Maldon the carpet was solid concrete, and
the legs of the table immovably embedded therein.

Rachel, gentle-footed, kicked the footstool away to its lair under the
table, and simultaneously extinguished the taper, which she dropped
with a scarce audible click into a vase on the mantelpiece. Then she
put the cover on the tube with another faintest click, restored the
tube to its drawer with a rather louder click, and finally, with a
click still louder, pushed the drawer home. All these slight sounds
were familiar to Mrs. Maldon; they were part of her regular night
life, part of an unconsciously loved ritual, and they contributed in
their degree to her placid happiness.

"Now the blinds, my dear!" said she.

The exhortation was ill-considered, and Rachel controlled a gesture of
amicable impatience. For she had not paused after closing the drawer;
she was already on her way across the room to the window when Mrs.
Maldon said, "Now the blinds, my dear!" The fact was that Mrs. Maldon