steps to release himself of the burden. When he attacked
her before her mother, there was a violent quarrel
from which Mildred fled to hide in her room or in the
remotest part of the garden. When he hunted her out
to insult her alone, she sat or stood with eyes down and
face ghastly pale, mute, quivering. She did not inter-
rupt, did not try to escape. She was like the chained
and spiritless dog that crouches and takes the shower of
blows from its cruel master.

Where could she go? Nowhere. What could she
do? Nothing. In the days of prosperity she had
regarded herself as proud and high spirited. She now
wondered at herself! What had become of the pride?
What of the spirit? She avoided looking at her image
in the glass--that thin, pallid face, those circled eyes,
the drawn, sick expression about the mouth and nose.
``I'm stunned,'' she said to herself. ``I've been stunned
ever since father's death. I've never recovered--nor
has mother.'' And she gave way to tears--for her
father, she fancied; in fact, from shame at her weakness
and helplessness. She thought--hoped--that she
would not be thus feeble and cowardly, if she were not
living at home, in the house she loved, the house where
she had spent her whole life. And such a house! Comfort
and luxury and taste; every room, every corner of
the grounds, full of the tenderest and most beautiful
associations. Also, there was her position in Hanging
Rock. Everywhere else she would be a stranger and
would have either no position at all or one worse than