Mrs. Renshaw glanced at her with a curious look.
“Nance, dear,” she said in a low, trembling voice, “don’t ever get into the habit of trying to be boyish and that sort of thing. Don’t ever do that! The only good women are the women who accept God’s will and bow to his pleasure. Anything else leads to untold wretchedness.”
Nance made no reply to this and they both began searching for more shells among the stranded sea-drift.
Over their heads the sea-gulls whirled with wild disturbed screams. There was only one sail on the horizon now and Nance fixed her thoughts upon it and an immense longing for Adrian surged up in her heart.
Meanwhile, between Linda and Miss Doorm a conversation much more sinister was proceeding. Rachel seemed from their first encounter and as soon as the girl came into contact with her to reassert all her old mastery. She deliberately overcame the frightened child’s instinctive movement to keep pace with the others and held her closely to her side as if by the power of some ancient link between them, too strong to be overcome.
“Let me look at you,” she said as soon as their friends were out of hearing. “Let me look into your eyes, my pretty one!”
She laid one of her gaunt hands on the girl’s shoulder and with the other held up her chin.
“Yes,” she remarked after a long scrutiny during which Linda seemed petrified into a sort of dumb submission, “yes, I can see you’ve struggled against him. I can see you’ve not given up without an effort. That means that you have given up! If you hadn’t fought against him he wouldn’t have followed you. He’s like that. He always was like that.” She removed her hands but kept her eyes fixed gloomily on the girl’s face. “I expect you’re wishing now you’d never seen this place, eh? Aren’t you wishing that? So this is the end of all your selfishness and your vanity? Yes, it’s the end, Linda Herrick. It’s the end.”
She dragged the girl slowly forward along the path. On their right as they advanced, the sun flickered upon the rank grasses which grew intermittently in the soft sand and on their left the glittering sea lay calm and serene under the spacious sky.
Linda felt her feet grow heavy beneath her and her heart sank with a sick misgiving as she saw how far they had permitted the others to outstrip them. Beyond anything else it was the power of cruel memories which held the young girl now so docile, so helpless, in the other’s hands. The old panic-stricken terror which Rachel had the power of exciting in her when a child seemed ineluctable in its endurance. Faintly and feebly in her heart Linda struggled against this spell. She longed to shake herself free and rush desperately in pursuit of the others but her limbs seemed turned to lead and her will seemed paralyzed.