Mrs Yule's behaviour to Marian was marked with a singular diffidence; she looked and spoke affectionately, but not with a mother's freedom; one might have taken her for a trusted servant waiting upon her mistress.

Whenever opportunity offered, she watched the girl in a curiously furtive way, that puzzled look on her face becoming very noticeable.

Her consciousness was never able to accept as a familiar and unimportant fact the vast difference between herself and her daughter.
Marian's superiority in native powers, in delicacy of feeling, in the results of education, could never be lost sight of.

Under ordinary circumstances she addressed the girl as if tentatively; however sure of anything from her own point of view, she knew that Marian, as often as not, had quite a different criterion.

She understood that the girl frequently expressed an opinion by mere reticence, and hence the carefulness with which, when conversing, she tried to discover the real effect of her words in Marian's features.
'Hungry, too,' she said, seeing the crust Marian was nibbling.