Only when we
become fathers or mothers in our turn do we learn what our fathers
and mothers have done for us. Thus it was with Dolly. When once
the first period of childish dependence was over, she regarded
Herminia with a smouldering distrust and a secret dislike that
concealed itself beneath a mask of unfelt caresses. In her heart
of hearts, she owed her mother a grudge for not having put her in a
position in life where she could drive in a carriage with a
snarling pug and a clipped French poodle, like Aunt Ermyntrude's
children. She grew up, smarting under a sullen sense of injustice,
all the deeper because she was compelled to stifle it in the
profoundest recesses of her own heart.
XIX.
When Dolly was seventeen, a pink wild rose just unrolling its
petals, a very great event occurred in her history. She received
an invitation to go and stop with some friends in the country.
The poor child's life had been in a sense so uneventful that the
bare prospect of this visit filled her soul beforehand with
tremulous anticipation.
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