Not a word was said about the money.
As soon as she could escape decently, Muriel kissed her aunt and mother, and went upstairs to bed.
The moon had risen. It threw light panels of grey across the dark floor of her room. Muriel left her blind undrawn, and went to stand where that afternoon her aunt had stood, gazing towards the twinkling lights of Kingsport.
Of course she had known for weeks that this was coming, but she had tried to shut her eyes against the truth. She could not stay at Miller's Rise.
Ever since Connie's death she should have known this. Her mother had failed with Connie, yet she had met bitter failure with such outstanding social strategy that it had become transformed to something like a triumph. But it had opened her eyes to the knowledge that with Muriel she might fail without hope of safety. You can hide the unhappiness of a marriage, but no one can hide in a provincial town the glaring failure of no marriage whatsoever, and every one in Marshington knew that poor Muriel Hammond had not had so much as an affair.
No, it was quite certain; she would never marry now. Better to face the fact and deal with it unflinchingly. What then? Could she stay there at Miller's Rise to "help her mother" indefinitely? She knew that her mother had never wanted help. Always the hope had been that she would marry. To this end alone had she been trained and cared for; and now she sat, meal after meal, between her mother and her father. She knew that they found her presence secretly humiliating. She was spoiling the best thing in the lives of both of them.
"I ought to go," thought Muriel. "But where? How?" What in the whole world was there left for her to do? She had abandoned all hope of a career to help her mother, and her mother did not need her, and she was unmarried. "Nobody wants me—I'm like Aunt Beatrice, living in fear of an unloved old age. I must have some reason for living. I must, I must. I can't bear to live without. I just can't bear it. Oh, what am I going to do with myself?"
From the calm valley the mist-veiled fields gleamed silver like still water. The unanswering moon sailed on across the sky.
She began to walk now up and down the room. She could not bear herself. She wanted to fling off her body. She wanted to become wildly hysterical, to sob and scream with a pain of despair that was physical as well as mental.
"What have I done to bring this on myself?" she asked, she to whom this terrible burden of negation proved a torture. "I always tried to do the best that I could see."