Others might find their strength in the sense of universal human fellowship; she would fain live apart, kindly disposed to all, but understanding well that her first duty was to tend the garden of her mind.

That it was also her first joy was, by the principles of her religion, justification in pursuing it.
In a few days she obliged her mother to concede to her a share in the work of the house.

She had nothing of the common feminine interest in such work for its own sake, but it was a pleasure to lessen her mother's toil.

There was very little converse between them; for evidently they belonged to different worlds.

When Mrs.Hood took her afternoon's repose, it was elsewhere than in the room where Emily sat, and Emily herself did not seek to alter this habit, knowing that she often, quite involuntarily, caused her mother irritation, and that to reduce their intercourse as far as could be without marked estrangement was the best way to make it endurable to both.