From the Gormers' tumultuous progress across their native continent, she returned with an altered view of her situation.

The renewed habit of luxury--the daily waking to an assured absence of care and presence of material ease--gradually blunted her appreciation of these values, and left her more conscious of the void they could not fill.

Mattie Gormer's undiscriminating good-nature, and the slap-dash sociability of her friends, who treated Lily precisely as they treated each other--all these characteristic notes of difference began to wear upon her endurance; and the more she saw to criticize in her companions, the less justification she found for making use of them.
The longing to get back to her former surroundings hardened to a fixed idea; but with the strengthening of her purpose came the inevitable perception that, to attain it, she must exact fresh concessions from her pride.

These, for the moment, took the unpleasant form of continuing to cling to her hosts after their return from Alaska.

Little as she was in the key of their MILIEU, her immense social facility, her long habit of adapting herself to others without suffering her own outline to be blurred, the skilled manipulation of all the polished implements of her craft, had won for her an important place in the Gormer group.