Then on reflection it left some tarnish on her family, even if the memory of the dear dead boy, the too brilliant boy, softened from the poignancy of utter disappointment into a tender sorrow and an infinite pity and forgiveness.
But the tragedy turned her thoughts from marriage to some mission of well-doing.

She determined to devote that proportion of her inheritance which would have been John's share to this end: the liberation and redemption of women.
She was no "anti-man," like Vivie.

She liked men, if truth were told, a tiny wee bit more than women.

But she wished in the moods that followed her brother's death in 1894 to be a mother by adoption, a refuge for the fallen, the bewildered, the unstrung.

She helped young men back into the path of respectability and wage-earning as well as young women.