Lady Joan regarded them listlessly, willing to seem to attend to the boy, but, with her thoughts far away, while now and then she turned a weary gaze towards the next window: all she saw thence was a great, mounded country, dreary as sunshine and white cold could make it.

Storm, driving endless whirls of spectral snow, would have been less dreary to her than the smiling of this cold antagonism.

It was a picture of her own life.

Evil greater than she knew had spread a winter around her.

If her father suffered for the sins of his fathers, she suffered for his, and had for them to dwell in desolation and loneliness.
One thing after another Cosmo brought her, but none of them seemed much to interest her.