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Walpole, Hugh, Sir, 1884-1941

"The Captives"

Now he
was suddenly plunged into the middle of a confusion that was all the
more complicated because he could not tell what his mother and his,
sister were thinking. He knew that Amy had disliked him ever since
his return, and that that dislike had been changed into something
fiercer since his declared opposition to Thurston. His mother he
simply did not understand at all. She spoke to him still with the
same affection and tenderness, but behind the words he felt a hard
purpose and a mysterious aloofness.
She was not like his mother at all; it was as though some spy had
been introduced into the house in his mother's clothing.
But for them he did not care; it was his father of whom he must
think. Here, too, there was a mystery from which he was deliberately
kept. He knew, of course, that they were all expecting some crisis;
as the days advanced he could feel that the excitement increased. He
knew that his father had declared that he had visions and that there
was to be a revelation very shortly; but of these visions and this
revelation he heard only indirectly from others. His father said
nothing to him of these things, and at the ordinary Chapel services
on Sunday there was no allusion to them.


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