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Walpole, Hugh, Sir, 1884-1941

"The Captives"

Tramp,
tramp, tramp round the house she went.
It was incredible how deeply Maggie had interfered with this ritual.
She had certainly not intended to do so. After that first effort to
change certain things in the house she had retired from the battle,
had completely capitulated. Nevertheless she had interfered with all
Grace's movements and, as the terror of her grew, it seemed to
pervade every nook and corner of the house, so that Grace felt that
she could go nowhere without that invasion. Oh, how she resented it,
and how afraid she was! After Paul and Maggie returned from that
summer holiday she saw that Paul too felt Maggie's strangeness. To
Grace, from the beginning of that autumn, every movement and gesture
of Maggie's was strange. The oddity of her appearance, her ignorance
of everything that seemed to Grace to be life, her strange, half-
mocking, half-wondering attitude to the Church and its affairs
("like a heathen in Central Africa"), her dislike of the Maxses and
the Pynsents and her liking for the Toms and Caroline Purdie, her
odd silences and still odder speeches, all these things increased
the atmosphere that separated her from the rest of the world.


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