"But, but—but didn't people talk?" Lettice asked.
"Yes, they did, and some of them even quarreled with my uncle about me; but you see he told every one what a bad girl I was, and in a way it wasn't a lie, and he could make people believe it, because he believed it himself. He did really believe that I'd made father leave the money to me, though I was only five when he died. Why, sometimes I even got muddled myself, and used to feel I must be all the dreadful things he said. Oh! I was miserable. You can be very, very miserable when you're seventeen, and it doesn't seem a bit funny then. I remember once I saved up my pennies and retrimmed my summer hat—I always hated the things she got for me—and made it look quite pretty. I was so pleased with it; and then when I came down she said it was unsuitable, and she made me take it off, and go to church in the horrid old brown felt I'd worn all the winter, though it was a broiling June day! I cried—I cried all the service. So to punish me, when we came out, she asked the vicar, me standing by, to change our pew, because she said she couldn't trust me so near the choir! (That was one of the things they always said, that I ran after men.) However, she was done that time, for the vicar played up like a trump. He said he'd speak to the choir, and see they didn't annoy me again; and then he turned to me and paid the dearest old-fashioned compliment about my sweet face being enough to turn any young man's head—and me in that frightful old hat and my nose swelled purple with crying!" She burst out laughing.
"But you did get away at last?"
"Yes, I did. I found a friend to help me ... but I can't talk about that." Visibly, under Lettice's eyes, her face clouded over and changed. It was a significant change: not a mere shadow falling from without, but a revolution within. The under side of her nature, black with premature grief and premature passions, slowly turned its ugliness into view.
"Did you ever hate any one?" she asked, her voice sinking and her eyes glowing as she relived the feelings she described. "Did you ever know what it was to turn sick and cold with loathing, to have the world go black, black, when a certain person comes near? Did you? No, I know you never did, you're far too good a Christian. But I'm not a Christian. I don't believe in any religion of love. There's little enough love here, and what there is goes to the wall. And there's no love over us; just a cruel, cruel, grinding power, which delights in breaking to bits whatever it sees that's beautiful and happy. Oh, it's an ugly, cruel, hateful world!"
"I think it's a very nice world," said Lettice, her words falling like drops of soft water on white-hot steel. They did not very accurately reflect her thoughts, but Lettice's words seldom did that. Dorothea laughed them to scorn.
"You wouldn't if you were in my shoes," she said derisively. She sat up. "Listen, and I'll tell you if you like. You've just heard what sort of life I had when I was a girl; I can laugh over it now, but it wasn't very gay at the time. Well, I got away, as I said; and for a little I was happy—oh, I was—for just a little, little while. And then, in a moment—everything gone. Everything. All I'd cared for, and the hopes I had—oh, I had, I had such heavenly hopes—all gone, all broken, dead, dead, dead." She beat her palm on the ground. "I dare say if I'd been older I might have taken it better," she said, turning her eyes on Lettice with an appeal which nothing in earth or heaven could satisfy; for it was an appeal to the Moving Finger to go back, to reverse what had been written. "I might have been gentle and forgiving and resigned then. But I wasn't old enough. I'm only twenty-one now. And I'm tired—I'm tired."
The mournful vibrations of her voice died away.
"It is very tiring to hate anybody," said Lettice, deftly plucking the core of meaning out of these wild speeches. Dorothea did not seem to hear. Her eyes, transparent windows of her soul, were miserably sad. Presently with a quick sigh she roused herself, turned the key on memory and drew down the blind.
"There, that's enough about me. I didn't mean to tell you all this, but never mind, I'm glad you know. Now let's talk about something cheerful. Tell me about that handsome cousin of yours. What's he like?"