should be conscious, before everything, of her father's loss. But
she was not. It meant to her at present not so much the loss of a
familiar figure as the sudden juggling, by an outside future, of all
the regular incidents and scenes of her daily life, as at a
pantomime one sees by a transformation of the scenery, the tables,
the chairs, and pictures the walls dance to an unexpected jig. She
was free, free, free--alone but free. What form her life would take
she did not know, what troubles and sorrows in the future there
might be she did not care--to-morrow her life would begin.

Although unsentimental she was tender-hearted and affectionate, but
now, for many years, her life with her father had been a daily
battle of ever-increasing anger and bitterness. It may be that once
he had loved her; that had been in those days when she was not old
enough to love him . . . since she had known him he had loved only
money. She would have loved him had he allowed her, and because he
did not she bore him no grudge. She had always regarded her life,
sterile and unprofitable as it was, with humour until now when, like
a discarded dress, it had slipped behind her. She did not see it,
even now, with bitterness; there was no bitterness for anything in
her character.

As they walked Uncle Mathew was considering her for the first time.
On the other occasions when he had stayed in his brother's house he
had been greatly occupied with his own plans--requests for money
(invariably refused) schemes for making money, plots to frighten his
brother out of one or other of his possessions. He had been frankly
predatory, and that plain, quiet girl his niece had been pleasant
company but no more. Now she was suddenly of the first importance.
She would in all probability inherit a considerable sum. How much