Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“ Oddly enough, however, she found herself, on her return, liking not only Rosemary, her daily companion, more than she had ever liked her, but the High School girls, too. It was, she knew, because she had seen so much of Marigold Hamble and because they were so different from Marigold. Marigold had not attempted to molest her in any way; she had, indeed, attempted to attach her; but Alix, in regard to Marigold, had never for a moment relaxed her circumspection, though, in regard to Lady Mary, it was impossible not often to relax it. ”

“ In the mornings she rode with Jerry.
How strange Heathside seemed to her when she at last returned to it, as strange as when she had first come to it from France. Life at Cresswell Abbey was so much more like life at Maman's than anything at Heathside. Always, at Maman's, there was that same sense of mental grace; always the people, the varying people, coming and going, who displayed it. The people at Cresswell were not so graceful or so interested in mental things ”

“ The difficulties about France; how I could not leave my country; and about Maman, how I must be near her always; that it is like that with us; that we do not leave our mothers when we marry. And I said that since I am a Catholic, the children, if I married, would have to be Catholics, too. It all surprised her very much. It pleased her, too, and reassured her; for though she is so fond of me she would much rather her son did not marry a French girl and a Catholic. And she is right in that.”
“I don't know that she's right,” Giles muttered. “You must have surprised her very much, indeed, Alix. ”

“ She sat there on the sofa in her blue fritillary jumper and her dark beads, her hands lightly clasped around one of the old leather cushions, a little as she might have sat, in her early convent days, giving an account of herself in the parloir—where the lives of the saints, heavily gilded, lay symmetrically on the centre table—to the relative who had come to pay her a weekly visit. ”

“ Did not all one's meaning come from her?
“And what did Jerry say to that?” Giles was inquiring.
“He said I was too young. He said he would wait. He said he could perhaps live in France for part of the time. He did not speak very reasonably.”
“It seems to me that he spoke very reasonably, indeed. He can wait. And you are very young. How old is it you are now, Alix?”
“I shall be eighteen in July. Not young enough to change as much as he expects,” said Alix. ”

“ Highly eligible and altogether suitable.”
“I said I could not marry in England,” said Alix, and it was with difficulty now that she restrained her tears, remembering her proud words to Giles about an English marriage on the cliff-path last summer; remembering Jerry, so bright and beautiful, and France, brighter and more beautiful and with claims far deeper than any Jerry could put forward. What meaning could life have for any Frenchwoman out of France? ”