t, her mother prompted her all through; if she
asked questions, her mother answered them pleasantly; so that they got
on very well together, and everybody was satisfied--especially Jim,
who was benefiting by Aunt Victoria's bequest to the extent of being
able to keep up with the best of his bar-loafing acquaintances.

CHAPTER XXV

When she did what Aunt Victoria approved, Beth felt that she was
making Aunt Victoria happy. Her dead were never far from her, never
beyond recall. She conquered her pride for Aunt Victoria's sake, and
began to go out again with her mother for the morning walk that winter
unasked; but Mrs. Caldwell seemed indifferent to the attention. She
let Beth walk beside her day after day, but remained absorbed in her
own reflections, and made no effort to talk to Beth and take her out
of herself; so that Beth very soon found the duty intolerably irksome.
It irritated her, too, when she caught her mother smiling to herself,
and on asking what was amusing her, Mrs. Caldwell replied, still
smiling, "Never _you_ mind." With Beth's temperament it was not
possible that the sense of duty would long survive such snubs.
Gradually she began to wander off by herself again, leaving her mother
pacing up and down the particular sheltered terrace overlooking the
sea on which she always walked at that hour, and Bernadine playing
about the cliffs or the desolate shore.

The whole place was desolate and melancholy at that time of the year.
The wind-swept streets were generally deserted, and the few people who
ventured out looked cold and miserable in their winter wraps. When a
gleam of sunshine enlivened the sky, the sailors would stand at the
top of the steps that led down on to the pier, with their hands in
their trousers-pockets, chewing tobacco, and straining their eyes out
seaward as if they were watching for something special; and Beth would
stand there among them, and look out too--out, far beyond the range of
their mental vision, eastwards, to summer lands whence the swallows
came, where the soft air was perfumed with flowers, and there was
brightness and warmth and ease, and the sea itself, so full of
complaint down below there, raged no more, neither lamented, but
sang. And there Aunt Victoria would be, sitting somewhere out of doors
under the trees, with good things, books and work and fruit and
flowers, piled up on a little table beside her, and every wish of her
heart gratified, looking serenely ha