I can not say she was tired of marriage, for she had loathed her marriage from the first, and had not found it at all better than her expectation: she had been too ignorant to forebode half its horrors.
Education she had had but little that was worth the name, for she had never been set growing; and now, although well endowed by nature, she was gradually becoming stupid.

People who have plenty of money, and neither hope nor aspiration, must become stupid, except indeed they hate, and then for a time the devil in them will make them a sort of clever.
Miss Yolland came undulating.

No kiss, no greeting whatever passed between the ladies.

Sepia began at once to rearrange a few hot-house flowers on the mantel-piece, looking herself much like some dark flower painted in an old missal.
"This day twelve months!" said Hesper.
"I know," returned Sepia.
"If one could die without pain, and there was nothing to come after!" said Hesper.

"What a tiresome dream it is!" "Dream, or nightmare, or what you will, you had better get all you can out of it before you break it," said Sepia.
"You seem to think it worth keeping!" yawned Hesper.
Sepia smiled, with her face to the glass, in which she saw the face of her cousin with her eyes on the fire; but she made no answer.