Chapter 9

All these events had come upon Elizabeth with overwhelming suddenness.
It seemed to her like a confused dream. Yet the fact remained that there
she was, dressed in black, an inmate of one of those handsome houses,
the interiors of which she had so often pictured to herself out on
Torungen.

Captain Beck was married to a second wife, a woman of stern principles,
full of decision and respectability, who had brought him a considerable
fortune, and, under her lynx-eyed rule, had restored that order in
household matters which, during the period her husband was a widower,
had been far too much neglected; and though his power might still be
absolute on board the Juno, it had long since ceased to be so in his own
house. By her grown-up step-children Madam Beck was in the highest
degree respected, though not exactly loved, owing to the various
unaccustomed restraints to which they now found themselves subjected;
and as to Carl, his easy tact, notwithstanding the independent position
which he enjoyed in his home as salaried member of a coast commission,
enabled him to keep on the best of terms with his imperious stepmother.
His duties would detain him about home for another year, to be still
fêted by the town, and idolised by his sisters, who were never tired of
speculating upon eligible matches for him.

From the very first, Elizabeth, who, in her utter ignorance how to
behave, committed one egregious blunder after another, had perceived
with her strong sense that it would require all the cleverness and
patience she possessed to enable her to maintain the situation; and she
began by following Madam Beck about untiringly like a lamb. Many a
painful scene had she to go through during the earlier period of their
connection, and she bore them with a quiet gentleness which Madam Beck
took for modest docility, but which had its real origin in a fixed
determination to succeed. Every now and then, however, she would give it
up as hopeless, and would seat herself disconsolately by the window with
her cheek upon her hand, and gaze wistfully out over the harbour. She
longed so for cold fresh air, and would end by throwing up the window
and stretching herself with her heated face as far out of it as she
possibly could, till Madam Beck would come in, and in a stern voice call
her back. Madam Beck, in her irritation, used to say that it was almost
as if they had taken a wild thing into the house.

Carl Beck understood very well what she was going through, and would
occasionally throw her an encouraging look; but Elizabeth affected
always not to understand it. On one occasion, however, when she was
corrected in his presence, she hurriedly left the room, and throwing
herself on her bed, lay there and sobbed as if her