After Ellen's departure she had endeavoured to help in the kitchen,
but had made so many mistakes that Aunt Anne and the kitchen-maid
had been compelled to banish her. She now wondered how during so
many years she had run the house at all, but then her father had
cared about nothing so that money was not wasted. She knew that Aunt
Anne excused her mistakes just now because of the shock of her
father's death and the events that followed it, but Maggie knew also
that these faults were deep in her character. She could explain it
quite simply to herself by saying that behind the things that she
saw there was always something that she did not see, something of
the greatest importance and just beyond her vision; in her efforts
to catch this farther thing she forgot what was immediately in front
of her. It had always been so. Since a tiny child she had always
supposed that the shapes and forms with which she was presented were
only masks to hide the real thing. Such a view might lend interest
to life, but it certainly made one careless; and although Uncle
Mathew might understand it and put it down to the Cardinal
imagination, she instinctively knew that Aunt Anne, unless Maggie
definitely attributed it to religion, would be dismayed and even, if
it persisted, angered.
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