It suited her few friends to imagine she’d been subject to a thousand physical and spiritual abuses, and been thrown out of chapel doors that then were bolted against her. It was difficult to explain that her father and her aunt received her absence with sorrow tempered by their trust in the will of God. She would return to Bethesda, or she wouldn’

“But it can’t go on and on like this.” His silence seemed to ask, “Why not?,” and to answer it she made a little explanatory gesture with her free hand. “Without any meaning,” she said. “Anything to hope for.” “But it has been like that from the beginning,” he pointed out, genuinely puzzled. His eyes were still on the road. “You knew that. I never

William realized that he’d been worried, after watching the usually placid Emeline rage and the usually tough Cecelia weep, that the prospect of losing Sylvie might have rendered them unrecognizable.

It was hard to tell if Father loved her. Often, it seemed that all he cared about was whether or not he could mould her into something pretty and agreeable, a present to be given away to some other man.