less than security; and for the rest of her days, if she capitulated now, she would be at the mercy of her family. She would be among them on sufferance. Sooner any loneliness, any quandary, sooner even starvation, than shelter on such terms. Inclining her head, she accepted her ostracism without a protest. As soon as she had accepted it—as soon, that is, as the worst had been definitely spoken and she had definitely survived it—she felt the sense of her liberty flooding over her. Her very name dropped from her like a piece of old skin. She became that unique being, the person who has no relations. Alice Jennings had had relations, Lydia Protheroe had none, Lydia Protheroe had never even had a mother. Independence could scarcely go further. She swept one last slow look around their circle, and passed out of the room. III After she had left them—for she had gone then and there, in her own phrase, “out into the night”—they had uttered, when they recovered a little from their consternation, all the things they might have been expected to utter. They were very hot and angry. Her father, a stout man, had blown out his cheeks, tugged at his whiskers and pronounced, “No daughter of mine.” It was an excommunication. “The ingratitude. To think that ever ...” her mother had whimpered. Her aunt, who was elderly, frail, and timorous, had bleated, “Oh, and to think of all the _horrible_ men in the world.” Her brother, a severely good young man, had said, “All I ask, father, and you, too, mother, is that I may NEVER hear her name again,” and his wife, who was like a little brown wren, his mere echo, had said, “Oh, dear, it does seem hard, doesn’t it? but Bertie is always right about these things.” Her sister, who was engaged, summed up their main unspoken thought as she said fretfully and anxiously, “But what are we to say to people?” IV