Sheer lack of power to resist bound them hand and foot. And
she, Betty Vanderpoel, was here upon the spot, and, as far as she could
understand, was being implored to take no steps, to do nothing. The
atmosphere in which she had spent her life, the world she had been
born into, had not made for fearfulness that one would be at any time
defenceless against circumstances and be obliged to submit to outrage.
To be a Vanderpoel was, it was true, to be a shining mark for envy as
for admiration, but the fact removed obstacles as a rule, and to find
one's self standing before a situation with one's hands, figuratively
speaking, tied, was new enough to arouse unusual sensations. She
recalled, with an ironic sense of bewilderment, as a sort of material
evidence of her own reality, the fact that not a week ago she had
stepped on to English soil from the gangway of a solid Atlantic liner.
It aided her to resist the feeling that she had been swept back into the
Middle Ages.
"When he is angry," was one of the first questions she put to Ughtred,
"what does he give as his reason? He must profess to have a reason."
"When he gets in a rage he says it is because mother is silly and
common, and I am badly brought up.
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