“What!”
“I say he is fine looking,” repeated the girl. “What broad shoulders he has, and how magnificently he carries his head!”
“You call that fine looking, do you?” sniffed her aunt.
“Yes. Don’t you?”
“Martin Howe ain’t my style of man.”
“But he’s so strong and splendid!”
“I never saw a splendid Howe yet,” was Ellen’s icy retort.
She turned from the window, took up a cloth, and went to scrubbing the paint viciously.
Lucy, realizing the tactlessness of her observation, tried by light, good-humored chatter to efface its memory; but all attempts to blot it from her aunt’s mind were useless, and the 88 relations between the two women remained strained for the rest of the day. So strained and uncomfortable were they that Lucy, wearied out by her hard work, was only too glad to bid Ellen good night and seek her own room early.
Through its windows long shafts of moonlight fell across the floor, flecking it with jagged, grotesque images of the trees outside. Once alone, she did not immediately start to undress, but lingered thoughtfully looking out into the night. Every muscle in her body ached, and in her heart was a sinking loneliness. For the first time since her arrival at Sefton Falls she surrendered herself to the distaste she felt toward her aunt and her surroundings. Could she stay, she asked herself. The narrowness of the environment raised an issue vital enough; nevertheless, grave as it was, it sank into insignificance when weighed against the vastly more potent factor of Ellen’s personality. The girl had come east with the intention of nursing and caring for her father’s sister. She felt he would have wished her to come; and casting every other inclination aside, she had obeyed what seemed to her the voice of duty. But she had been misled, disappointed. 89 None of her father’s kindliness lurked in this embittered, malicious-matured woman, toward whom, although bound by ties of blood, she felt neither respect nor affection. Nor did her aunt need her. After all, was it her duty to remain and waste her youth to no purpose? Could she face the horror of a stretch of years that held in them no human sympathy? What should she do? What ought she to do? Should she go or stay?