She struck the girl lightly but testily on the side of the face.
Ephraim was as foolish as are most men in sight of a damsel in distress.
He made no impartial inquiry into the real cause of trouble; he did not seek Justice in her place of hiding.

He stepped to his mother's side, stern and determined, remembering only that she was often unwise, and that he could control her.
"You ought not to have done that.

You must never do it again." With the print of floury fingers on her glowing cheeks the girl sat more astonished than angry, full of ruth when her aunt began to sob aloud.
The mother knew that she was no longer the first woman in her son's love.
It was without doubt, Mrs.Croom's first bitter pang of jealousy that lay at the beginning of those causes which drove Susannah out upon a strange pilgrimage.

But above and beyond her personal jealousy was a consideration certainly dearer to a woman into whose inmost religious life was woven the fibre of the partisan.

As she expressed it to herself, she agonised before the Lord in a new fear lest her unconverted son should be established in his unbelief by love for a woman who had never sought for heavenly grace; but, in truth, that which she sought was that both should swear allegiance to her own interpretation of grace.