garden-plot where blackened rhododendrons were swaying in the October
blast, she wilfully bathed herself in grim gloom and in an affectation
of despair.

Somehow she enjoyed the experience. She had only to tighten her
lips--and she became oblivious of her clumsiness and her cruelty,
savouring with pleasure the pain of the situation, clasping it to her!
Now and then a thought of Mr. Skellorn's tragedy shot through her brain,
and the tenderness of pity welled up from somewhere within her and
mingled exquisitely with her dark melancholy. And she found delight in
reading her poor mother like an open book, as she supposed. And all the
while her mother was dreaming upon the first year of Hilda's life,
before she had discovered that her husband's health was as unstable as
his character, and comparing the reality of the present with her early
illusions. But the clever girl was not clever enough to read just that
page.

"We ought to be everything to each other," said Mrs. Lessways, pursuing
her reflections aloud.

Hilda hated sentimentalism. She could not stand such talk.

"And you know," said Hilda, speaking very frigidly and with even more
than her usual incisive clearness of articulation, "it's not your
property. It's only yours for life. It's my property."

The mother's mood changed in a moment.

"How do you know? You've never seen your father's will." She spoke in
harsh challenge.