With her own hands she always arranged his breakfast on the tray, nor never omitted taking him a basin of soup before he got up; and, whatever he may have concluded concerning her motives, he gave no sign of imagining them other than generous.

Perhaps the part in him which had never had the opportunity of behaving ill to his mother, and so had not choked up its channels with wrong, remained, in middle age and illness, capable of receiving kindness.
Hesper saw the relation between them, but without the least pleasure or the least curiosity.

She seemed to care for nothing--except the keeping of her back straight.

What could it be, inside that lovely form, that gave itself pleasure to be, were a difficult question indeed.

The bear as he lies in his winter nest, sucking his paw, has no doubt his rudimentary theories of life, and those will coincide with a desire for its continuance; but whether what either the lady or the bear counts the good of life, be really that which makes either desire its continuance, is another question.