It was well enough to "manage" when by so doing one could keep one's own carriage; but when one's best contrivance did not conceal the fact that one had to go on foot, the effort was no longer worth making.
Lily and her mother wandered from place to place, now paying long visits to relations whose house-keeping Mrs.Bart criticized, and who deplored the fact that she let Lily breakfast in bed when the girl had no prospects before her, and now vegetating in cheap continental refuges, where Mrs.Bart held herself fiercely aloof from the frugal tea-tables of her companions in misfortune.

She was especially careful to avoid her old friends and the scenes of her former successes.

To be poor seemed to her such a confession of failure that it amounted to disgrace; and she detected a note of condescension in the friendliest advances.
Only one thought consoled her, and that was the contemplation of Lily's beauty.

She studied it with a kind of passion, as though it were some weapon she had slowly fashioned for her vengeance.

It was the last asset in their fortunes, the nucleus around which their life was to be rebuilt.
She watched it jealously, as though it were her own property and Lily its mere custodian; and she tried to instil into the latter a sense of the responsibility that such a charge involved.