Not long afterwards I met Alan Fraser again , when I was out for a canter on my mare . He was strolling through the beech wood with a couple of big collies , and he stopped short as I drew near . 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 XXXXX the big echoing house weighed on my spirit .
For because in like of that through to toward with