CHAPTER XX.
Mrs.Prescott made vivid and compelling those days, those things, which Katie had a little while before had the fancy of so easily slipping away from.

She made them things which wove themselves around one, or rather, things of which one seemed an organic part, from which one could no more pull away than the tree's branch could pull away from the tree's trunk.
In her presence Katie was claimed by those things out of which she had grown, claimed so subtly that it seemed a thing outside volition.

Mrs.
Prescott did not, in any form, say things were as they were; it was only that she breathed it.
How could one combat with words, or in action, that rooted so much deeper than mere words or action?
She was a slight and simple looking lady to be doing anything so large as stemming the tide of a revolutionary impulse.

She had never lost the girlishness of her figure--or of her hands.

So much had youth left her.
Her face was thin and pale, and of the contour vaguely called aristocratic.