out at the window. But
even Alice will beat you in the end. Of course there's Mary. But I
shouldn't try it on with Mary either. She's really more dangerous than
I am, because she looks so meek and mild. But she'll beat you, too, if
you begin bullying her."

The Vicar raised his stricken head.

"Gwenda," he said, "you're terrible."

"No, Papa, I'm not terrible. I'm really awfully kind. I'm telling you
these things for your good. Don't you worry. I shan't run very far
after young Rowcliffe."

XXXIII

Left to himself, the Vicar fairly wallowed in his gloom. He pressed
his hands tightly to his face, crushing into darkness the image of his
daughter Gwenda that remained with him after the door had shut between
them.

It came over him with the very shutting of the door not only that
there never was a man so cursed in his children (that thought had
occurred to him before) but that, of the three, Gwenda was the one in
whom the curse was, so to speak, most active, through whom it was most
likely to fall on him at any moment. In Alice it could be averted.
He knew, he had always known, how to deal with Alice. And it would be
hard to say exactly where it lurked in Mary. Therefore, in his times
of profoundest self-commiseration, the Vicar overlooked the existence
of his daughter Mary. He was an artist in gloom and Mary's sweetness
and goodness spoiled the picture. But in Gwenda the curse was imminent
and at the same time incalculable. Alice's behavior could be fairly
predicted and provided for. There was no knowing what Gwenda would do
next. The fear of what she might do hung forever over his head, and it
made him jumpy.

And yet in this sense of cursedness the Vicar had found shelter for
his self-esteem.

And now his fear, his noble and righteous fear of what Gwenda might
do, his conviction that she would do something, disguised more
than ever his humiliating fear of Gwenda. She was, as he had said,
terrible. There was no dealing with Gwenda; there never had been.
Patience failed before her will and wisdom before the deadly thrust of
her intelligence. She had stabbed him in several places before she had
left the room.

* * * * *

The outcome of his brooding (it would have shocked the Vicar if he
could have traced its genesis) was an extraordinary revulsion in
Rowcliffe's favor. So far from shutting the Vicarage door in the young
man's face, the Vicar was, positively he was, incl