 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. »You really
must have more lunch, dear. It isn't right to go so long; you'll make yourself
ill.«
    »Have you been out?« Marian asked.
    »Yes; I went to Holloway.«
    Mrs Yule sighed and looked very unhappy. By going to Holloway was always
meant a visit to her own relatives - a married sister with three children, and a
brother who inhabited the same house. To her husband she scarcely ever ventured
to speak of these persons; Yule had no intercourse with them. But Marian was
always willing to listen sympathetically, and her mother often exhibited a
touching gratitude for this condescension - as she deemed it.
    »Are things no better?« the girl inquired.
    »Worse, as far as I can see. John has begun his drinking again, and him and
Tom quarrel every night; there's no peace in the 'ouse.«
    If ever Mrs Yule lapsed into gross errors of pronunciation or phrase, it was
when she spoke of her kinsfolk. The subject seemed to throw her back into a
former condition.
    »He ought to go and live by himself,« said Marian, referring to her mother's
brother, the thirsty John.
    »So he ought, to be sure. I'm always telling them so. But there! you don't
seem to be able to persuade them, they're that silly and obstinate. And Susan,
she only gets angry with me, and tells me not to talk in a stuck-up way. I'm
sure I never say a word that could offend her; I'm too careful for that. And
there's Annie; no doing anything with her! She's about the streets at all hours
