It was a very gradual process she had adopted, and it had been the more successful.

It had got so far with him that whatever Sepia showed the least wish to understand, Mewks would take endless trouble to learn for her.

The rest of the servants, both at Durnmelling and in London, were none of them very friendly with her--least of all Jemima, who was now with her mistress as lady's-maid, the accomplished attendant whom Hesper had procured in place of Mary being away for a holiday.
The more Sepia realized, or thought she realized, the position she was in, the more desirous was she to get out of it, and the only feasible and safe way, in her eyes, was marriage: there was nothing between that and a return to what she counted slavery.

Rather than lift again such a hideous load of irksomeness, she would find her way out of a world in which it was not possible, she said, to be both good and comfortable: she had, in truth, tried only the latter.

But if she could, she thought, secure for a husband this gentleman-yeoman, she might hold up her head with the best.