It was inconceivable to her that any girl with Berkeley blood in her veins could be so utterly devoid of proper pride as Gabriella had proved herself to be; and the shock of this discovery had left a hurt look in her face.

There were days when she hardly spoke to the girl, when refusing food, she opened her lips only to moisten her thread, when the slow tears seemed forever welling between her reddened eyelids.

As they had just passed through one of these painful periods, Gabriella was surprised to find that, for the moment at least, her mother appeared to have forgotten her righteous resentment.

Though it could hardly be said that Mrs.Carr spoke cheerfully--since cheerfulness was foreign to her nature--at least she had spoken.

Of her own accord, unquestioned and unurged, she had volunteered a remark to her daughter; and Gabriella felt that, for a brief respite, the universe had ceased to be menacing.
"Gabriella, you have had a visitor," repeated Mrs.Carr, and it was clear that her sorrow (she never yielded to passion) had been overcome by a natural human eagerness to tell her news.
"Not Cousin Jimmy ?" asked the girl lightly.
"No, you could never guess, if you guessed all night." "Not Charley Gracey surely?
I wouldn't speak to him for the world." Though Jane had returned to Charley, and even Mrs.Carr, feeling in her heart that her younger daughter had dealt her the hardest blow, had been heard to say that she "pitied her son-in-law more than she censured him," Gabriella had not softened in her implacable judgment.
"Of course it wasn't Charley.