Before
Maggie's arrival he had had but a slender excuse for his continual
presence. He could not sit in the empty drawing-room surveying the
large and ominous portrait of the Cardinal childhood, quite alone
save for Thomas, without seeming a very considerable kind of fool.
And to appear that in the eyes of Aunt Anne, who already regarded
mankind in general with pity, would be a mistake.
Now that Maggie was here he might come so often as he pleased. Many
was the dark afternoon through the long February and March months
that they sat together in the dim drawing-room, Maggie straining her
eyes over an attempted reform of some garment, Mr. Magnus talking in
his mild ironical voice with his large moon-like spectacles fixed
upon nothing in particular.
Mr. Magnus did all the talking. Maggie fancied that, all his life,
he had persisted in the same gentle humorous fashion without any
especial attention as to the wisdom, agreement or even existence of
his audience. She fancied that all men who wrote books did that.
They had to talk to "clear their ideas." She raised her eyes
sometimes and looked at him as he sat there.
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