In general she obeyed his expressed wishes with gentle indifference, as if she had no preferences of her own; once or twice he found that she was doing what he desired out of the spirit of obedience, which, as her mother's daughter, she believed to be her duty towards her affianced husband.

And this last motive for action depressed her lover more than anything.

He wanted the old Sylvia back again; captious, capricious, wilful, haughty, merry, charming.

Alas! that Sylvia was gone for ever.
But once especially his power, arising from whatever cause, was stopped entirely short--was utterly of no avail.
It was on the occasion of Dick Simpson's mortal illness.

Sylvia and her mother kept aloof from every one.