er mother's,
Miss Frost's, her father's. Looking, she made out the white cross at
Miss Frost's grave, the grey stone at her parents'. Then she turned
slowly, under the church wall, back to Manchester House.

She felt humiliated. She felt she did not want to see anybody at all.
She did not want to see Miss Pinnegar, nor the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras: and
least of all, Ciccio. She felt strange in Woodhouse, almost as if the
ground had risen from under her feet and hit her over the mouth. The
fact that Manchester House and its very furniture was under seal to be
sold on behalf of her father's creditors made her feel as if all her
Woodhouse life had suddenly gone smash. She loathed the thought of
Manchester House. She loathed staying another minute in it.

And yet she did not want to go to the Natcha-Kee-Tawaras either. The
church clock above her clanged eleven. She ought to take the
twelve-forty train to Mansfield. Yet instead of going home she
turned off down the alley towards the fields and the brook.

How many times had she gone that road! How many times had she seen
Miss Frost bravely striding home that way, from her music-pupils.
How many years had she noticed a particular wild cherry-tree come
into blossom, a particular bit of black-thorn scatter its whiteness
in among the pleached twigs of a hawthorn hedge. How often, how many
springs had Miss Frost come home with a bit of this black-thorn in
her hand!

Alvina did _not_ want to go to Mansfield that afternoon. She felt
insulted. She knew she would be much cheaper in Madame's eyes. She knew
her own position with the troupe would be humiliating. It would be
openly a little humiliating. But it would be much more maddeningly
humiliating to stay in Woodhouse and experience the full flavour of
Woodhouse's calculated benevolence. She hardly knew which was worse:
the cool look of insolent half-contempt, half-satisfaction with which
Madame would receive the news of her financial downfall, or the
officious patronage which she would meet from the Woodhouse magnates.
She knew exactly how Madame's black eyes would shine, how her mouth
would curl with a sneering, slightly triumphant smile, as she heard the
news. And she could hear the bullying tone in which Henry Wagstaff
would dictate the Woodhouse benevolence to her. She wanted to go away
from them all--from them all--for ever.

Even from Ciccio. For she felt he insulted her too. Subtly, they all
did it. They had regard for her p