On her uncle, whom she regarded as half-witted, she bestowed alternate tolerance and jeers.
She was, indeed, the only person whose remonstrances ever got under the wool with old Jim, and her sharp tongue had sometimes a cowing effect on his curious nonchalance which nothing else had.

For the rest, they had no neighbors with whom the girl could fraternize, and Whinborough was too far off to provide any adequate food for her vague hunger after emotion and excitement.
In this dangerous morbid state she fell a victim to the very coarse attractions of a young farmer in the neighboring valley of Shanmoor.

He was a brute with a handsome face, and a nature in which whatever grains of heart and conscience might have been interfused with the original composition had been long since swamped.

Mary, who had recklessly flung herself into his power on one or two occasions, from a mixture of motives, partly passion, partly jealousy, partly ennui, awoke one day to find herself ruined, and a grim future hung before her.

She had realized her doom for the first time in its entirety on the Midsummer Day preceding that we are now describing.