Sophia, when she entered the southwest chamber, set the lamp which
she carried on the bureau, and began moving about the rooms pulling
down the curtains, taking off the nice white counterpane of the
bed, and preparing generally for the night.
As she did so, moving with great coolness and deliberation, she
became conscious that she was thinking some thoughts that were
foreign to her. She began remembering what she could not have
remembered, since she was not then born: the trouble over her
mother's marriage, the bitter opposition, the shutting the door
upon her, the ostracizing her from heart and home. She became
aware of a most singular sensation as of bitter resentment herself,
and not against the mother and sister who had so treated her own
mother, but against her own mother, and then she became aware of a
like bitterness extended to her own self. She felt malignant
toward her mother as a young girl whom she remembered, though she
could not have remembered, and she felt malignant toward her own
self, and her sister Amanda, and Flora. Evil suggestions surged in
her brain--suggestions which turned her heart to stone and which
still fascinated her.
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