Don't you laugh at us a great deal?
Don't you think it all a great humbug?
You, I mean--how does it all strike you ?" His determination to know, while it gave meaning to their talk, hampered her; he seemed to press further and further, and made it appear so important.

She took some time to answer, and during that time she went over and over the course of her twenty-four years, lighting now on one point, now on another--on her aunts, her mother, her father, and at last her mind fixed upon her aunts and her father, and she tried to describe them as at this distance they appeared to her.
They were very much afraid of her father.

He was a great dim force in the house, by means of which they held on to the great world which is represented every morning in the _Times_.

But the real life of the house was something quite different from this.

It went on independently of Mr.Vinrace, and tended to hide itself from him.