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THE WINDOW 7did not feel the worth of it, and all that it implied, tothe marrow of her bones.

She turned with severity upon Nancy. He hadnot chased them, she said. He had been asked.

They must find a way out of it all. There mightbe some simpler way, some less laborious way, shesighed. When she looked in the glass and saw herhair grey, her cheek sunk, at fifty, she thought,possibly she might have managed things better—herhusband; money; his books. But for her own partshe would never for a single second regret her de-cision, evade difficulties, or slur over duties. Shewas now formidable to behold, and it was only insilence, looking up from their plates, after she hadspoken so severely about Charles Tansley, that herdaughters—Prue, Nancy, Rose—could sport withinfidel ideas which they had brewed for themselvesof a life different from hers; in Paris, perhaps; awilder life; not always taking care of some man orother; for there was in all their minds a mute ques-tioning of deference and chivalry, of the Bank ofEngland and the Indian Empire, of ringed fingers

and lace, though to them all there was something inthis of the essence of beauty, which called out themanliness in their girlish hearts, and made them, asthey sat at table beneath their mother’s eyes, honour

her strange severity, her extreme courtesy, like aqueen’s raising from the mud a beggar's dirty foot

and washing it, when she thus admonished them sovery severely about that wretched atheist who hadchased them to—or, speaking accurately, been in-vited to stay with them in—the Isle of Skye.

'There’ll be no landing at the Lighthouse