She loved her mother, but her love was embittered by her helplessness to mitigate her mother's unhappy lot.
Thalassa was a savage old pagan whose habitual watchful secretiveness relaxed into roaring melody in his occasional cups; in neither aspect could he be considered a suitable companion for the budding mind of a girl, but he loomed in her thoughts as a figure of greater import than her father or mother.

Her father was a gloomy recluse, her mother was crushed and broken in spirit.

Thalassa had been the practical head of the house ever since Sisily could remember anything, an autocrat who managed the domestic economy of their strange household in his own way, and brooked no interference.

"Ask Thalassa--Thalassa will know," was Robert Turold's unvarying formula when anybody attempted to fix upon him his responsibility as head of the house.

Sometimes Sisily was under the impression that her father for some reason or other, feared Thalassa.