Being answered, it added a hasty word of welcome, and the door was quickly opened.
She was about forty--perhaps two or three years older--with a cheerful aspect, and a face that had once been pretty.

It bore traces of affliction and care, but they were of an old date, and Time had smoothed them.

Any one who had bestowed but a casual glance on Barnaby might have known that this was his mother, from the strong resemblance between them; but where in his face there was wildness and vacancy, in hers there was the patient composure of long effort and quiet resignation.
One thing about this face was very strange and startling.

You could not look upon it in its most cheerful mood without feeling that it had some extraordinary capacity of expressing terror.

It was not on the surface.
It was in no one feature that it lingered.