But with, perhaps, pardonable egotism, she had taken it for granted that Peter must be different.

Whatever his outward humours, he was _her_ son; rather a part of herself, in her loving fancy, than a separate individual.
The moment of awakening had been long in coming to Lady Mary; the moment when a mother has to find out that her personality is not necessarily reproduced in her child; that the being who was once the unconscious consoler of her griefs and troubles may develop a nature perfectly antagonistic to her own.
She had kept her eyes shut with all her might for a long time, but necessity was forcing them open.
Perhaps her association with John Crewys made it easier to see Peter as he was, and not as she had wished him to be.
And yet, she thought miserably to herself, he had certainly tried hard to be affectionate and kind to her--and probably it did not occur to him, as it did to his mother, how pathetic it was that he should have to try.
Peter did not think much about it.
Sometimes, during his short stay at Barracombe, he had walked through a game of croquet with his mother--it was good practice for his left hand--or he listened disapprovingly to something she inadvertently (forgetting he was not John) read aloud for his sympathy or admiration; or he took a short stroll with her; or bestowed his company upon her in some other dutiful fashion.

But these filial attentions over, if he yawned with relief--why, he never did so in her presence, and would have been unable to understand that Lady Mary saw him yawning, in her mind's eye, as plainly as though he had indulged this bad habit under her very nose.

He bestowed a portion of his time on his aunts in much the same spirit, taking less trouble to be affectionate, because they were less exacting, as he would have put it to himself, than she was.
The scheme of renting a house in London had duly been laid before him, and rejected most decisively by the young gentleman.

His father had never taken a house in town, and he could see no necessity for it.