It was characteristic of the woman that she did not knock ere entering.

She had always jealously guarded her rights to the solitude of her own room; and, even when she was a school-girl, it had been an understood household regulation that no one was to enter it without knocking.

But now that she was mistress of all the rooms in Seat-Sandal, she ignored the simple courtesy towards others.
Consequently, when she entered, she saw the tears in her mother's eyes.
They only angered her.

"Why should the sorrows of others darken her happy home ?" Sophia was one of those women whom long regrets fatigue.

As for her father, she reflected, "that he had been well nursed, decorously buried, and that every propriety had been attended to.