"Of course, he was in love with her.
That was the light that came into his face when he was going to do what he thought she wanted him to do." "And she--do you think that she was--" "What an idea! It would have been perfectly grotesque!" VIII.
Their affliction brought the Dryfooses into humaner relations with the Marches, who had hitherto regarded them as a necessary evil, as the odious means of their own prosperity.

Mrs.March found that the women of the family seemed glad of her coming, and in the sense of her usefulness to them all she began to feel a kindness even for Christine.

But she could not help seeing that between the girl and her father there was an unsettled account, somehow, and that it was Christine and not the old man who was holding out.

She thought that their sorrow had tended to refine the others.

Mela was much more subdued, and, except when she abandoned herself to a childish interest in her mourning, she did nothing to shock Mrs.March's taste or to seem unworthy of her grief.
She was very good to her mother, whom the blow had left unchanged, and to her father, whom it had apparently fallen upon with crushing weight.
Once, after visiting their house, Mrs.March described to March a little scene between Dryfoos and Mela, when he came home from Wall Street, and the girl met him at the door with a kind of country simpleness, and took his hat and stick, and brought him into the room where Mrs.March sat, looking tired and broken.