Agnes

Agnes is Mrs. Brympton's house maid who welcomes Alice Hartley and shows her around the house. She is the one who always has to fetch Hartley whenever Mrs. Brympton is calling for her because she does not ring the bell for Hartley, even though there is a bell that connects the two rooms.

Even though it is only subtle, the fact that Agnes corrected her sentence “That's nobody's room”¹ into “It's empty, I mean”² shows how much respect she has for Emma Saxon because the word “nobody” has a negative connotation since it can express ignorance towards a person.

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1 Lewis, R. W. B. The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton. Vol. 1. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968. 457-474, Print., 459.

2 Ibid.