Her mother was a capable and ambitious woman, one in whom active characteristics were more prominent than the emotional.

With such parents, every probability told against her patient acceptance of a lot which allowed her faculties no scope.

And the circumstances of her childhood were such as added a peculiar bitterness to the trials waiting upon her maturity.
Clara, you remember, had reached her eleventh year when her father's brother died and left the legacy of which came so little profit.

That was in 1878.

State education had recently made a show of establishing itself, and in the Hewetts' world much argument was going on with reference to the new Board schools, and their advantages or disadvantages when compared with those in which working-folk's children had hitherto been taught.