water philosopher Emerson . . . 'dear Mr. Emerson' . . . whenever I asked her a direct, sensible question. . . . And all she accomplished was to give me a hunger for facts—hard, unvarnished facts—pleasant or unpleasant."
A kind of hot passion entered the metallic voice, so that it took on an unaccustomed warmth and beauty. "You don't know how much she is responsible for in my life. She . . . and all the others like her . . . killed my chance of happiness, of satisfaction. She cost me my husband. . . . What chance had I with a man who came from an older, wiser world . . . a world in which things were looked at squarely, and honestly as truth . . . a man who expected women to be women and not timid icebergs? No, I don't think I shall ever forgive her." She paused for a moment, thoughtfully, and then added, "And whatever she did, whatever cruelties she practised, whatever nonsense she preached, was always done in the name of duty and always 'for your own good, my dear.'"
Then abruptly, with a bitter smile, her whole manner changed and took on once more the old air of indolent, almost despairing, boredom. "I couldn't begin to tell you all, my dear. . . . It goes back too far. We're all rotten here . . . not so much rotten as desiccated, for there was never much blood in us to rot. . . . The roots go deep. . . . But I shan't bore you again with all this, I promise."
Olivia, listening, wanted to say, "You don't know how much blood there is in the Pentlands. . . . You don't know that they aren't Pentlands at all, but the children of Savina Dalgedo and Toby Cane. . . . But even that hasn't mattered. . . . The very air, the very earth of New England, has changed them, dried them up."
But she could not say it, for she knew that the story of those letters must never fall into the hands of the unscrupulous Sabine.
