I had to do it -- Father had decreed -- my Shirley pride demanded -- that I should do it . I looked him unseeingly in the face , struck my mare a blow with my whip , and dashed past him . I even felt angry , I think , that a Fraser should have the power to make me feel so badly in doing my duty . After that I had forgotten . There was nothing to make me remember , for I never met Alan Fraser again . The years slipped by , one by one , so like each other in their colourlessness that I forgot to take account of them . I only knew that I grew older and that it did not matter since there was nobody to care . One day they brought Father in , white-lipped and groaning . His mare had thrown him , and he was never to walk again , although he lived for five years . Those five years had been the happiest of my life . For the first time I was necessary to someone -- there was something for me to do which nobody else could do so well . I was Father 's nurse and companion ; and I found my pleasure in tending him and amusing him , soothing his hours of pain and brightening his hours of ease . People said I `` did my duty '' toward him . I had never liked that word `` duty , '' since the day I had ridden past Alan Fraser in the beech wood . I could not connect it with what I did for Father . It was my delight because I loved him . I did not mind the moods and the irritable outbursts that drove others from him . But now he was dead , and I sat in the sullen dusk , wishing that I need not go on with life either . The loneliness of the big echoing house weighed on my spirit . I was solitary , without companionship .
I looked out on the outside world where the only sign of human habitation visible to my eyes was the light twinkling out XXXXX the library window of Glenellyn on the dark fir hill two miles away .
After although by from in of on to toward without