It was always, "your poor sainted mother in heaven," or, "your blessed pretty mother"-- and with that instinctive knowledge of the feelings of other people which characterized Halcyone's point of view, she had avoided questioning her old nurse.

Her stepfather, James Anderton, was a very wealthy stockbroker--she knew that, and also that a year or so after her mother's death he had married again--"a person of his own class," Miss La Sarthe had said, "far more suitable to him than poor Elaine." Halcyone had only been six years old at her mother's death, but she kept a crisp memory of the horror of it.

The crimson, crumpled-looking baby brother, in his long clothes, whose coming somehow seemed responsible for the loss of her tender angel, for a long time was viewed with resentful hatred.

It was a terrible, unspeakable grief.

She remembered perfectly the helpless sense of loss and loneliness.
Her mother had loved her with passionate devotion.