Finally they were to pension her, and she would die the hated
treasure of a boarding-house. She had built up in herself an enormous
habit of reference to these upstairs people, she had curbed down all
discordant murmurings of her soul, her very instincts were perverted or
surrendered. She was sexless, her personal pride was all transferred,
she mothered another woman's child with a hard, joyless devotion that
was at least entirely compatible with a stoical separation. She treated
us all as things that counted for nothing save to fetch and carry for
her charge. But the Honourable Beatrice could condescend.
The queer chances of later years come between me and a distinctly
separated memory of that childish face. When I think of Beatrice, I
think of her as I came to know her at a later time, when at last I came
to know her so well that indeed now I could draw her, and show a hundred
little delicate things you would miss in looking at her. But even then I
remember how I noted the infinite delicacy of her childish skin and the
fine eyebrow, finer than the finest feather that ever one felt on the
breast of a bird.
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