This hard bright
blindness had kept her immediate horizon apparently
unaltered. Her incapacity to recognise change made her
children conceal their views from her as Archer concealed
his; there had been, from the first, a joint pretence
of sameness, a kind of innocent family hypocrisy,
in which father and children had unconsciously
collaborated. And she had died thinking the world a good
place, full of loving and harmonious households like
her own, and resigned to leave it because she was
convinced that, whatever happened, Newland would
continue to inculcate in Dallas the same principles and
prejudices which had shaped his parents' lives, and that
Dallas in turn (when Newland followed her) would
transmit the sacred trust to little Bill. And of Mary she
was sure as of her own self. So, having snatched little
Bill from the grave, and given her life in the effort, she
went contentedly to her place in the Archer vault in St.
Mark's, where Mrs. Archer already lay safe from the
terrifying "trend" which her daughter-in-law had never
even become aware of.
Opposite May's portrait stood one of her daughter.
Mary Chivers was as tall and fair as her mother, but
large-waisted, flat-chested and slightly slouching, as the
altered fashion required. Mary Chivers's mighty feats
of athleticism could not have been performed with the
twenty-inch waist that May Archer's azure sash so
easily spanned. And the difference seemed symbolic;
the mother's life had been as closely girt as her figure.
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