"I hadn't done it, no. Hadn't lifted the gun. But Dick was right. I'd eaten the good food off the cedar table with the double damask cloth. Slept in the soft beds. Sat in the parlour, never known a day's hunger or cold, never asked where any of it come from.[...] I'd lived in a cosy place made out of secrets and lies. Now I was in another country, and its climate had no mercy. [...]
Shame would keep us silent, shame and the wishing that it was different. Dick and that woman who'd sent me down a johnny-cake, they'd tell their children the story. There was no shame in it for them, only grief. But who would listen to them?
The knowing was Pa's poisonous gift to me, and I was sick with it."
From Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville (2011)