What a wretched week it had been.... Even if Clare had not been so moody, Alwynne would have felt ill at ease ... she had known perfectly well that she owed the first weeks of her return to her aunt ... but at a hint from Clare she had stifled her conscience and stayed.... And now Elsbeth, she could tell, was deeply hurt.... Once away from Clare, Alwynne could reflect and be sorry.... She wouldn't have believed that she could be so careless of Elsbeth's feelings.... She was suddenly and generously furious with herself. How selfish, how abominably selfish she had been.... No wonder Roger had been shocked! Of course neither he nor Elsbeth could ever understand how difficult it was to withstand Clare.... It had been possible once.... Her thought strayed to that early Christmas when she had resisted all Clare's arguments.... But now she had no choice.... However determined one might be beforehand--and she had intended to return that first day--one's will was beaten aside, blown about like a straw in a strong wind.... If only Roger would understand that.... She hated him to think her so selfish.... Elsbeth needn't have told him, she thought resentfully ... it was not like Elsbeth to give her away.... She supposed she had hurt Elsbeth's feelings pretty badly.... Why, oh why, hadn't she been firmer with Clare? She had only to say, quite quietly, that she must do what she felt to be right.... Clare couldn't have eaten her.... She began to rehearse the conversation; it soothed her to compose the telling phrases she might have uttered. They sounded all right ... but, of course, face to face with Clare she could never have said them.... Clare, in indifference, displeasure or appeal, would have conquered without battle given ... in her heart she knew that. She moved uneasily about the room, deep in thought. For the first time her attitude to Clare struck her as contemptible.... What had Roger said? "Like a dog after a thrashing." Intolerable! She flung up her head, her pride writhing under the phrase. So that was how it struck outsiders! Outsiders? She didn't care a dead leaf for outsiders.... Let them think what they chose! But Roger? And Elsbeth? Did they really think her weak and enslaved? It stung her that Roger should think so meanly of her. She told herself that the loss of his opinion in no way affected her--and instantly began to revolve within herself phrases, explanations, actions, wherewith to regain it. And there was Elsbeth.... He had thought her unkind to Elsbeth.... He was right there! She saw, remorsefully, with her usual thoroughness, that she had been, for many a long year, as the plagues of Egypt to her Elsbeth.