It would very greatly increase her liberty of action.
She had little doubt that the very fact of it would help to overcome her father's prejudices and very considerably modify his attitude.
So, in a fashion, she had during the past three years come to regard her twenty-fifth birthday as a milestone in her life.

She would be patient till it came, but then--at last--if circumstances permitted, she would take her fate into her own hands, She would--at last--assume the direction of her own life.
So she had planned, but so it was not to be.

Her fate had already begun to shape itself in a fashion that was little to her liking.
Travelling with her father in the North earlier in the summer, she had met with a slight accident which had compelled her to make the acquaintance of a lady staying at the same hotel whom she had disliked at the outset and always sought to avoid.

This lady, Mrs.
Emmott, was a widow with no settled home.

Profiting by circumstances she had attached herself to Sylvia and her father, and now she was the latter's wife.
How it had come about, even now Sylvia scarcely realized.