Their life was strangely apart from, defiant of, that of the
mainland and the village. It yielded obedience to traditions and customs
of an earlier, wilder age; and in so much was sinister, a little
frightening. Yet out of precisely this rather primitive and archaic
environment came Darcy Faircloth, her half-brother, the human being
closest to her by every tie of blood and sentiment in the world save
one--the father of them both. The situation was startling, alike in its
incongruities and in its claims.
During those two years of continental wandering--following upon her
meeting with him at Marseilles--the whole sweet and perplexing matter of
Faircloth had fallen more or less into line, taking on a measure of
simplicity and of ease. She thought of him with freedom, wrote to him
when he could advise her of his next port of call.--To him at Deadham, by
his request, he being very careful for her, she never wrote.--And
therefore, all the more perhaps, being here at Deadham, his home and all
the suggestive accessories of it so constantly before her eyes, did her
relation to him suffer a painful transformation.
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