She was distraught and uneasy in her mind, could settle less and less to her singing or a book, and was the victim of an increasing restlessness of mind and limb.
Others did not see it; she had self-control; but repression was no cure.
And for all this there were reasons enough; but the fear of identification by the neighbors as the notorious Mrs.Minchin was no longer one of them.
No; it was her own life, root and branch, that had grown into the upas-tree which was poisoning existence for Rachel Steel.

She was being punished for her second marriage as she had been punished for her first, only more deservedly, and with more subtle stripes.

Each day brought a dozen tokens of the anomalous position which she had accepted in the madness of an hour of utter recklessness and desperation.

Rachel was not mistress in her own house, nor did she feel for a moment that it was her own house at all.

Everything was done for her; a skilled housekeeper settled the smallest details; and that these were perfect alike in arrangement and execution, that the said housekeeper was a woman of irreproachable tact and capability, and that she herself had never an excuse for concrete complaint, formed a growing though intangible grievance in Rachel's mind.