As for her father, he had never married again, but he had never paid much attention to her.

He had been a reserved, silent man, himself under the sway of his mother and sisters.

Charles Eustace had had an obsession to the effect that the skies of his own individual sphere would fall to his and his child's destruction, if his female relatives deserted him, and that they had threatened to do, upon the slightest sign of revolt.

Sometimes Annie's father had regarded her wistfully and wondered within himself if it were quite right for a child to be so entirely governed, but his own spirit of yielding made it impossible for him to realise the situation.

Obedience had been little Annie Eustace's first lesson taught by the trio, who to her represented all government, in her individual case.
Annie Eustace obeyed her aunts, and grandmother (her father had been dead for several years), but she loved only three,--two were women, Margaret Edes and Alice Mendon; the other was a man, and the love was not confessed to her own heart.
This afternoon Annie wore an ugly green gown, which was, moreover, badly cut.