In her nightdress she leaned out of the window, poised, as it seemed to her, above a swaying carpet of lights. Life seemed to hold every promise in store for her. She crossed to her bed, drew the clothes about her and, forgetting her supper, forgetting all that had happened to her, her journey, her fainting, the young man, Edward the parrot, she fell into a slumber as deep, as secure, as death itself. CHAPTER IV THE CHAPEL Maggie woke next morning to a strange silence. Many were the silent mornings that had greeted her at St. Dreots, but this was silence with a difference; it was the silence, she was instantly aware, of some one whose very soul was noise and tumult. She listened, and the sudden chirping of some sparrows beyond her window only accentuated the sense of expectation. She had never, in all her days, been so conscious of Sunday. She was almost afraid to move lest she should break the spell. She lay in bed and thought of the preceding evening. Her fainting fit seemed to her now more than ever unfortunate; it had placed her at a disadvantage with them all. She could imagine the stout young man returning to his home and saying: "Their niece has arrived. Seems a weak little thing. Fainted right off there in the drawing-room." Or her aunts saying anxiously to one another: "Well, I didn't know she was as delicate as that. I hope she won't be always ill," ... and she wasn't delicate--no one stronger. She had never fainted before. The silliness of it! The next thing that disturbed her was the comfort and arrangement of everything. Certainly the drawing-room had not been very orderly, full of old things badly placed, but this bedroom was clean and tidy, and the supper last night, so neat on its tray with everything that she could want! She could feel the order and discipline of the whole house. And she had never, in all her life, been either orderly or disciplined. She had never been brought up to be so. How could you be orderly when there were holes in the bedroom ceiling and the kitchen floor, holes that your father would never trouble to have mended?