He had so habituated himself to devote his mind and his heart to the service of his country, that he had almost risen above or sunk below humanity.
But she, who had been essentially human, had been a link between him and the world.
There were his three children, the youngest of whom was now nearly nineteen, and they surely were links! At the first moment of his bereavement they were felt to be hardly more than burdens.

A more loving father there was not in England, but nature had made him so undemonstrative that as yet they had hardly known his love.

In all their joys and in all their troubles, in all their desires and all their disappointments, they had ever gone to their mother.

She had been conversant with everything about them, from the boys' bills and the girl's gloves to the innermost turn in the heart and the disposition of each.

She had known with the utmost accuracy the nature of the scrapes into which Lord Silverbridge had precipitated himself, and had known also how probable it was that Lord Gerald would do the same.