Haughtily dumb and patient during her married years; proud morally, socially, intellectually; finding in this stiffening of the self her only defence against the ugly realities of daily life.

Proud too in her loneliness and grief--proud of her very grief, of her very capacity for suffering, of all the delicate shades of thought and sorrow which furnished the matter of her secret life, lived without a sign beside the old father whose coarser and commoner pride took such small account of hers! And now--she seemed to herself to be already drinking humiliation, and foreseeing ever deeper draughts of it to come.

She, who had never begged for anything, was in the mood to see her whole existence as a refused petition, a rejected gift.

She had offered Edward Manisty her all of sympathy and intelligence, and he was throwing it back lightly, inexorably upon her hands.

Her thin cheek burnt; but it was the truth.