been more uneasy than her suspicion of her relative's
view of this truth. Her relative was prodigious
she had never done her relative justice. These
larger conditions all tasted of her, from morning
till night; but she was a person in respect to whom
the growth of acquaintance could only strange as
it might seem keep your heart in your mouth.

The girl's second great discovery was that, so
far from having been for Mrs. Lowder a subject of
superficial consideration, the blighted home in Lex-
ham Gardens had haunted her nights and her days.
Kate had spent, all winter, hours of observation that
were not less pointed for being spent alone; recent
events, which her mourning explained, assured her
a measure of isolation, and it was in the isolation
above all that her neighbour's influence worked.
Sitting far downstairs Aunt Maud was yet a pres
ence from which a sensitive niece could feel herself
extremely under pressure. She knew herself now,
the sensitive niece, as having been marked from far
back. She knew more than she could have told you,
by the upstairs fire, in a whole dark December after
noon. She knew so much that her knowledge was
what fairly kept her there, making her at times
more endlessly between the small silk-covered sofa
that stood for her in the firelight and the great grey
map of Middlesex spread beneath her lookout. To
go down, to forsake her refuge, was to meet some
of her discoveries half-way, to have to face them
or fly before them; whereas they were at such a

[[32]]

p031 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p032w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p033

v?