The story she had to tell oppressed her listener with the sense of some great unknown horror.

It was like trying to see a dark place by lightning.

The flashes of her revelations revealed a distorted surface, but not the hidden depths.

Mrs.Pendleton's agitated mind, doubling in and out a maze of conjectures like a distracted hare, turned again and again to the question of Sisily's complicity in her father's death.
"I can hardly believe it even now," she said with a shudder.

"Such a sweet pretty girl! And yet--there was something strange in her manner.