Martin did not know; he was aware that there was a great deal going on in the house that he did not fathom.

Amy, his sister, knew.

There was an alliance between his mother and his sister deep and strong, as he could see--he did not yet know that it was founded very largely on dislike and fear of himself.
How fantastic these theories of fire and passion must seem, he amused himself by considering, to any one who knew his mother only from the outside.

She was sitting to-day as always in her little pink and white chintz drawing-room, a bright fire burning and a canary singing in a cage beside the window.

The rest of the house was ugly and strangely uninhabited as though the Warlocks had merely pitched their tents for a night and were moving forward to-morrow, but this little room, close, smelling of musk and sweet biscuits (a silver box with lemon-shaped biscuits in it stood on a little table near the old lady), with its pretty pink curtains, its canary, and its heavy and softly closing door, was like a place enclosed, dedicated to the world, and ruled by a remorseless spirit of comfort.
Mrs.Warlock was only sixty years of age, but she had, a number of years ago, declared herself an invalid, and now never, unless she drove on a very fine afternoon, left the house.