'Philip says he won't.' Bell shook her head.

They walked on, Sylvia both disheartened and almost irritated at her mother's despondency.

But before they went to bed at night Bell said things which seemed as though the morning's feelings had been but temporary, and as if she was referring every decision to the period of her husband's return.
'When father comes home,' seemed a sort of burden at the beginning or end of every sentence, and this reliance on his certain coming back to them was almost as great a trial to Sylvia as the absence of all hope had been in the morning.

But that instinct told her that her mother was becoming incapable of argument, she would have asked her why her views were so essentially changed in so few hours.

This inability of reason in poor Bell made Sylvia feel very desolate.
Monday passed over--how, neither of them knew, for neither spoke of what was filling the thoughts of both.