He was smiling at her in a silly way and she saw that he was drunk.

She had had a horror of drunkenness ever since, as a little girl, she had watched an inebriated carter kicking his wife.

She always, after that, saw the woman's bent head and stooping shoulders.
Now she knew, sitting up in bed, that she was frightened not only of Uncle Mathew, but of the house, of the whole world.
She was alone.

She realised her loneliness in a great flash of bewilderment and cold terror as though the ground had suddenly broken away from her and she was on the edge of a vast pit.

There was no one in the house to help her.