Esther Waters • Paragraph 583
Stage 1 of 6

Read it through once

The avenue was full of wind and rain; the branches creaked dolefully overhead; the lane was drenched, and the bare fields were fringed with white mist, and the houses seemed very desolate by the bleak sea; and the girl's soul was desolate as the landscape. She had come to Woodview to escape the suffering of a home which had become unendurable, and she was going back in circumstances a hundred times worse than those in which she had left it, and she was going back with the memory of the happiness she had lost. All the grief and trouble that girls of her class have so frequently to bear gathered in Esther's heart when she looked out of the railway carriage window and saw for the last time the stiff plantations on the downs and the angles of the Italian house between the trees. She drew her handkerchief from her jacket, and hid her distress as well as she could from the other occupants of the carriage.