There were times when she could give the Murray look herself; it was not that which dismayed her—it was the uncanny something which seemed to peer out behind the Murray look that always broke her will. She trembled—faltered—yielded.
“Keep your letters,” she said bitterly, “and scorn the old woman who opened her home to you.”
She went out of the parlour. Emily was left mistress of the field. And all at once her victory turned to dust and ashes in her mouth.
She went up to her own room, hid her letters in the cupboard over the mantel, and then crept up on her bed, huddling down in a little heap with her face buried in her pillow. She was still sore with a sense of outrage—but underneath another pain was beginning to ache terribly.
Something in her was hurt because she had hurt Aunt Elizabeth—for she felt that Aunt Elizabeth, under all her anger, was hurt. This surprised Emily. She would have expected Aunt Elizabeth to be angry, of course, but she would never have supposed it would affect her in any other way. Yet she had seen something in Aunt Elizabeth’s eyes when she had flung that last stinging sentence at her—something that spoke of bitter hurt.
“Oh! Oh!” gasped Emily. She began to cry chokingly into her pillow. She was so wretched that she could not get out of herself and watch her own suffering with a sort of enjoyment in its drama—set her mind to analyse her feelings—and when Emily was as wretched as that she was very wretched indeed and wholly comfortless. Aunt Elizabeth would not keep her at New Moon after a poisonous quarrel like this. She would send her away, of course. Emily believed this. Nothing was too horrible to believe just then. How could she live away from dear New Moon?
“And I may have to live eighty years,” Emily moaned.
