“Veda begins to show a more-than daughterly interest in Beragon herself and an affair begins that Mildred soon becomes aware of.”

“I want you to get well, and then maybe we can spend some mother and daughterly times together, like before, remember?”

“It was more for her own wicked ends than for daughterly love, Granny herself had said.”

“To transmit her sibylline female heritage, this daughterless, nieceless woman must find female heirs to whom she is related by affinity, not genealogy.”