She sat in pale silence.

Then her mother broke into tears, bewailed herself as a luckless being, entreated her daughter's pardon, but in the end was perfectly ready to accept Adela's self-sacrifice.
On her return from New Wanley, Adela sat alone till tea-time, and after that meal again went to her room.

She was not one of those girls to whom tears come as a matter of course on any occasion of annoyance or of grief; her bright eyes had seldom been dimmed since childhood, for the lightsomeness of her character threw off trifling troubles almost as soon as they were felt, and of graver afflictions she had hitherto known none since her father's death.

But since the shock she received on that day when her mother revealed Hubert Eldon's unworthiness, her emotional life had suffered a slow change.

Evil, previously known but as a dark mystery shadowing far-off regions, had become the constant preoccupation of her thoughts.