de her miss it, poor girl, just as (I was soon to learn)
she had missed everything.

Millicent's face, the face of the one who had been at Girton, hadn't
tried for it; it had achieved a plainness I admired because it was oddly
like Viola's face, only that Millicent was sallow and thin and dry and
wore pince-nez.

Mildred, the nurse, was frankly plump and fair and florid like her
mother; her face would have been pretty if her father's nose hadn't
stepped in and struggled with her mother's and so spoilt it for her.

Norah, the youngest, was pretty--and odd. She was Viola all over again,
but more slender and coloured differently, coloured all wrong. I didn't
take to Norah all at once. I wasn't prepared for a Viola with blue eyes
and pink cheeks and light hair, and the figure of a young foal. Besides,
her hair was outrageous; it waved too much; it was all crinkles, and she
hadn't found out yet how to keep it tidy.

She told me afterwards it was "up" that evening for the first time. When
it came to her turn, she said: "There are such a dreadful lot of us,
aren't there?"

There certainly was. And as I looked at them I thought: Viola has done an
irreparable injury to her family, to all these charming people. She has
hurt her father and mother in their beauty and their dignity and their
honour. As for her sisters, she has ruined what they are much too
well-bred to call their "chances." The story of the going off to Belgium
with Jevons is spreading through the Close, and through the High School
where Millicent teaches, and through the garrison. They will try to hush
it up, but they won't be able to; it will reach Chatham and Dover. If
they go up to town it will follow them there. Wherever they go it will
ultimately follow them. She has struck at the solidarity of the family.
To be sure, it was the solidarity of the family that drove her to strike
at it. But if you were to tell Canon and Mrs. Thesiger that they had
driven her, that they had tied her up too tight, they wouldn't see it.
They would say: "We never stopped her going off to London. But that
wasn't enough for her. She must go off to Belgium with that man Jevons.
She must ruin us."

And Viola knew that she had ruined them.

And there they were, all holding themselves well, and all well
dressed--the two youngest in white, the elders in light colours on a
scale that deepened to Victoria's old rose. I remember them, even to what
they wore and the pathos of their wea