These aspirations she believed to be principles.

She tried to set her mind upon the unfolding revelations of the era, as young women in her grandfather's day used to try to set their minds upon Browning.

When Sarah told Mr.Clewe that she was going on the Dipsey because she would not let her husband go by himself, she did so because she was ashamed to say that she was in such sympathy with the great scientific movements of the day that she thought it was her duty to associate herself with one of them; but while she thought she was lying in the line of high principle, she was in fact expressing the truthful affection of her old-fashioned nature--a nature she was always endeavoring to keep out of sight, but which from its dark corner ruled her life.
She had an old-fashioned temper, which delighted in censoriousness.
The more interest she took in anything, the more alive was she to its defects.

She tried to be a good member of her church, but she said sharp things of the congregation.
No electrical illumination could brighten the soul of Mrs.Block.
She moved about the little vessel with a clouded countenance.

She was impressed with the feeling that something was wrong, even now at the beginning, although of course she could not be expected to know what it was.
At the bows, and in various places at the sides of the vessel, and even in the bottom, were large plates of heavy glass, through which the inmates could look out into the water, and there streamed forward into the quiet depths of the ocean a great path of light, proceeding from a powerful searchlight in the bow.