It is what one calls fate.

Once," she cried, "we Caynsards lived along the coast there in a house greater than the Red Hall, and our lands were richer.
Generation after generation of us have been pushed by fortune downwards and downwards.

The men lose lands and money, and the women disgrace themselves, or creep into some corner to die with a broken heart.

I talk to you as one of the villagers here.

I know very well that I speak the dialect of the peasants, and that my words are ill-chosen.