He thought she was suffering from long-continued anxiety about her mother, or that she had too much to do; and either cause was enough to make him treat her with a grave regard and deference which had a repressed tenderness in it, of which she, otherwise occupied, was quite unaware.

She liked him better, too, than she had done a year or two before, because he did not show her any of the eager attention which teased her then, although its meaning was not fully understood.
Things were much in this state when the frost broke, and milder weather succeeded.

This was the time so long looked forward to by the invalid and her friends, as favouring the doctor's recommendation of change of air.

Her husband was to take her to spend a fortnight with a kindly neighbour, who lived near the farm they had occupied, forty miles or so inland, before they came to Haytersbank.

The widow-woman was to come and stay in the house, to keep Sylvia company, during her mother's absence.