She was one of those persons who set themselves a very high standard, and resolve to drag both themselves and their neighbours up to it.

But, as the process is difficult, so it is disappointing.

People became rather shy of Mrs.Ruskin, and she of them, so that her life was solitary and her household quiet.

It was not merely from narrow Puritanism that she made so few friends; her morality and her piety, strict as they were within their own lines, permitted her most of the enjoyments and amusements of life; still less was there any cynicism or misanthropy.
But she devoted herself to her husband and son.

She was too proud to court those above her in worldly rank, and she was not easily approached except by people fully equal to her in strength of character, of whom there could never be many.