Mrs. Bathurst was not flashy now,
and any attempt at personal adornment on Dinah's part was always very
sternly repressed. She had met and writhed under the eye of scornful
criticism too often, and she distrusted her own taste. She was determined
that Dinah should never be subjected to the same humiliation.
She humiliated her often enough herself. It was the only means she knew
of asserting her authority; for she had no intention of ever being the
object of her daughter's contempt. She was harsh to the point of
brutality, so that the girl's heart was wont to quicken apprehensively
whenever she heard her step. She scolded, she punished, she coerced. But
from an outsider, the bare thought of a snub was unendurable, and the
possibility that Dinah might by any means lay herself open to one was
enough to bring down the vials of wrath upon her head. Dinah remembered
still with shivering vividness the whipping she had received on one
occasion for demeaning herself by running after the de Vignes's carriage
to deliver a message. Her mother's whippings had always been very
terrible, vindictively thorough. The indignity of them lashed her soul
even more cruelly than the unsparing thong her body. Because of them she
went in daily trepidation, submissive almost to the point of abjectness,
lest this hateful and demoralizing form of punishment should be inflicted
upon her.
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