She had a scorn of fashions in hair or dress except for Maria.

"Maria is young," she said, with an ineffable expression of love and pride, and a tincture of defiance, as if she were defying her own age, in the ownership of the youth of her child.
She was like a rose-bush which possessed a perfect bud of beauty, and her own long dwelling upon the earth could on account of that be ignored.

But Maria's father was different.

He was quite openly a vain man.

He was handsome, and he held fast to his youth, and would not let it pass by.