lost self.

When the horror of emptiness came over her, she dressed herself in her
black, with delicate care and precision, and visited her friends. Even in
moments of no intention she would find herself knocking at Lizzie's door
or Sarah's or Connie Pennefather's. If they were not in she would call
again and again, till she found them. She would sit for hours, talking,
spinning out the time.

She began to look forward to these visits.

Wonderful. The sweet peas she had planted had come up.

Hitherto Harriett had looked on the house and garden as parts of the space
that contained her without belonging to her. She had had no sense of
possession. This morning she was arrested by the thought that the plot she
had planted was hers. The house and garden were hers. She began to take an
interest in them. She found that by a system of punctual movements she
could give to her existence the reasonable appearance of an aim.

Next spring, a year after her mother's death, she felt the vague stirring
of her individual soul. She was free to choose her own vicar; she left her
mother's Dr. Braithwaite, who was broad and twice married, and went to
Canon Wrench, who was unmarried and high. There was something stimulating
in the short, happy service, the rich music, the incense, and the
processions. She made new covers for the drawing-room, in cretonne, a gay
pattern of pomegranate and blue-green leaves. And as she had always had
the cutlets broiled plain because her mother liked them that way, now she
had them breaded.