"Yes, dear, thank you--I will," said Miss Cardinal. They moved from
the room, Aunt Anne walking with a strange, almost clumsy
uncertainty, halting from one foot to the other as though she had
never learnt to trust her legs, a movement with which Maggie was to
become intensely familiar. It was as though her aunt had flown in
some earlier existence, and had never become accustomed to this
clumsier earthly fashion.

The spare bedroom was a bright room with a broad high window. The
view was magnificent, looking over the hill that dropped below the
vicarage out across fields and streams to Cator Hill, to the right
into the heart of the St. Dreot Woods, to the left to the green
valley through whose reeds and sloping shadows the Lisp gleamed like
a burnished wire threading its way to the sea. There was a high-
backed old-fashioned chair by the window. Against this Miss Cardinal
stood, her thin body reflected, motionless, as though it had been
painted in a long glass behind her. She gazed before her.

Maggie saw that she was agitated, passionately moved. The sun
catching the hoar-frost on the frozen soil turned the world to
crystal, and in every field were little shallows of blue light; the
St. Dreot Woods were deep black with flickering golden stars.

She tried to speak. She could not. Tears were in her eyes. "It is so
long . . . since I . . . London," she smiled at Maggie. Then Maggie
heard her say:

The Lord is my shepherd; therefore can I lack nothing.