She alone studied with real persistence, and, by the irony of fate, she alone continually exposed her ignorance, committed gross blunders, was guilty of deplorable lapses of memory.
Her unhappy lot kept her in a constant state of nervousness and shame.
She had no worldly tact, no command of her modest resources, yet her zeal to support the credit of the family was always driving her into hurried speech, sure to end in some disastrous pitfall.

Conscious of aesthetic defects, Zillah had chosen for her speciality the study of the history of civilization.

But for being a Denyer, she might have been content to say that she studied history, and in that case her life might also have been solaced by the companionship of readable books; but, as modernism would have it, she could not be content to base her historical inquiries on anything less than strata of geology and biological elements, with the result that she toiled day by day at perky little primers and compendia, and only learnt one chapter that it might be driven out of her head by the next.

Equally out of deference to her sisters, she smothered her impulses to conventional piety, and made believe that her spiritual life supported itself on the postulates of science.

As a result of all which, the poor girl was not very happy, but in that again did she not give proof of belonging to her time?
There existed a Mr.Denyer, but this gentleman was very seldom indeed in the bosom of his family.