"Your aunt's had a terrible night," she said. "She's insisted on
coming downstairs--I told her not. She never listens to anything I
say."
Maggie could see that something more than ordinary had occurred.
Aunt Elizabeth was on the edge of tears, and in so confused a state
of mind that she put sugar into her egg, and then ate it with a
puzzled air as though she could not be sure why it tasted so
strange. When Aunt Anne came in it was plain enough that she had
wrestled with demons during the night. Maggie had often seen her
before battling with pain and refusing to be defeated. Now she
looked as though she had but risen from the dead. It was a ghost in
very truth that stood there; a ghost in black silk dress with white
wristbands and a stiff white collar, black hair, so tightly drawn
back and ordered that it was like a shining skull-cap. Her face was
white, with the effect of a chalk drawing into which live, black,
burning eyes had been stuck. But it was none of these things that
frightened Maggie. It was the expression somewhere in the mouth, in
the eyes, in the pale bony hands, that spoke of some meeting with a
torturer whose powers were almost omniscient--almost, but not quite.
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