Uncle James, but she didn't make much of a man of him! And
she had no influence whatever with mamma. Mamma was her father's
favourite, and he taught her to despise grandmamma because she
couldn't hunt, and shrieked if she saw things killed. I think that's
silly myself, but it's better than being hard. Of course mamma is
worth a dozen of Uncle James, but--" Beth shrugged her shoulders, then
added temperately, "You know mamma has her faults, Aunt Victoria, it's
no use denying it. So what good did grandmamma do by staying? She just
went mad and died! If she'd gone away, and lived as you do, she might
have been alive and well now."

"Ah, my dear child," said the old lady sorrowfully, "that never could
have been; for I have observed that no woman who marries and becomes a
mother can ever again live happily like a single woman. She has
entered upon a different phase of being, and there is no return for
her. There is a weight of meaning in that expression: 'the ties of
home.' It is 'the ties of home' that restrain a loving woman, however
much she suffers; there are the little daily duties that no one but
herself can see to; and there is always some one who would be worse
off if she went. There is habit too; and there are those small
possessions, each one with an association of its own perhaps, that
makes it almost a sacred thing; but above all, there is hope--the hope
that matters may mend; and fear--the fear that once she deserts her
post things will go from bad to worse, and she be to blame. In your
grandmamma's day such a thing would never have been thought of by a
good woman; and even now, when there are women who actually go away
and work for themselves, if their homes are unhappy--" Aunt Victoria
pursed up her lips, and shook her head. "It may be respectable, of
course," she concluded magnanimously; "but I cannot believe it is
either right or wise, and certainly it is not loyal."

"Loyal!" Beth echoed; "that was my father's word to me: 'Be loyal.'
We've got to be loyal to others; but he also said that we must be
loyal to ourselves."

Aunt Victoria had folded up her knitting, and now rose stiffly, and
went out into the garden with an old parasol, and sat meditating in
the sun on the trunk of a tree that had been cut down. She often sat
so under her parasol, and Beth used to watch her, and wonder what it
felt like to be able to look such a long, long way back, and have so
many things to remember.

CHAPTER XXII