Her mother was an American, of a Quaker family from Derbyshire.

She has done nothing to merit your aversion." Faith listened astonished and baffled.

Nothing of this had he said to her.

Had he meant to say it to her?
Had it been in his mind?
Or was it only a swift adaptation to circumstances, an adroit means of working upon the sympathies of her father, who, she could see, was in a quandary?
Eglington had indeed touched the old man as he had not been touched in thirty years and more by one of his name.

For a moment the insinuating quality of the appeal submerged the fixed idea in a mind to which the name of Eglington was anathema.
Eglington saw his advantage.