The Emancipated

Cecily turned away and wept--wept for the past, which in these moments had lived again and again perished. It seemed to Spence that his wife mourned unreasonably. … "I am heavy-hearted, not for him, but for Cecily's dead love."

Naples widowhood, Cecily's education and marriage, Elgar's stumblings, and Roman disillusion culminate in mourning a love rather than a corpse — emancipation plot sealed as serial loss, so plot scores 85.

"I don't think it's time yet for Cecily to give up her set studies. I should like to find some one to read with her regularly again before long--say Latin and history; there would be no harm in a little mathematics. But there's a difficulty in finding the suitable person."

Lessingham, Spence, Miriam, and Cecily are individuated by how they manage a girl's mind — severe widow against emancipating aunt — so cast scores 86.

Cecily was seeing Rome for the first time, but she could not enjoy it in the way natural to her. It was only at rare moments that she _felt_ Rome. One of the most precious of her life's anticipations was fading into memory, displaced by a dull experience, numbered among disillusionings.

Two-part structure with boarding-house dilations; Rome and death accelerate, but propriety and study talk slow the middle, so pace scores 82.

By a window looking from Posillipo upon the Bay of Naples sat an English lady, engaged in letter-writing. She was only in her four-and-twentieth year, but her attire of subdued mourning indicated widowhood already at the stage when it is permitted to make quiet suggestion of freedom rather than distressful reference to loss…

Grey coldness against southern sunlight — climate and mourning stage named in one sentence — so prose scores 88.

In a London drawing-room, where the murmur of urbane colloquy rose and fell, broken occasionally by the voice of the nomenclator announcing new arrivals, two ladies, seated in a recess, were exchanging confidences.

Posillipo, boarding-house Italy, and London salon — emancipation mapped as climates and rooms that reframe the same girl, so world scores 90.

…the dress, however, was severely plain, and its grey coldness, which would well have harmonized with an English sky in this month of November, looked alien in the southern sunlight. There was no mistaking her nationality…

Alien grey mourning under Naples sun establishes freedom-as-problem before plot intrigues — atmospheric and inviting — so hook scores 87.

Not that what she beheld disappointed her, but that she was not herself in beholding. Had she stayed here on her first visit to Italy, on what a strong current of enthusiasm would the hours and the days have borne her!

Emancipation tested as loss of capacity to feel Rome — liberation as emptied anticipation, not slogan — so innov scores 86.

"We all have a secret desire to believe love imperishable." "An amiable sentiment; but it is better to accept the truth." … "First love is fool's paradise. But console yourself out of Boccaccio. 'Bocca baciata non perde ventura; anzi rinnuova, come fa la luna.'"

Dead first love met with Boccaccio's renewing moon — cool acceptance rather than tragic seal — so ending scores 84.