She knew they were symptoms of some secret ill, but what that ill was she did not know.

She kept the way open for Fay's sudden remorseful return to affectionate relations, and waited.
Those who, like Magdalen, do not put any value on themselves, are slow to take offence.

It was not that she did not perceive a slight, or a rebuff, or a sneer at her expense, but she never, so to speak, picked up the offence flung at her.

She let it lie, by the same instinct that led her to step aside in a narrow path rather than that her skirt should touch a dead mole.

No one could know Magdalen long without seeing that she lived by a kind of spiritual instinct, as real to her as the natural instincts of animals.
Fay became more and more haggard and irritable as the months at Priesthope drew into a year.