They had kept her fresh and gentle in a circle where freshness was soon lost and gentleness put aside.
Sylvia Thesiger was at this time seventeen, although her mother dressed her to look younger, and even then overdressed her like a toy.

It was of a piece with the nature of the girl that, in this matter as in the rest, she made no protest.

She foresaw the scene, the useless scene, which would follow upon her protest, exclamations against her ingratitude, abuse for her impertinence, and very likely a facile shower of tears at the end; and her dignity forbade her to enter upon it.

She just let her mother dress her as she chose, and she withdrew just a little more into the secret chamber of her dreams.

She sat now looking steadily out of the window, with her eyes uplifted and aloof, in a fashion which had become natural to her, and her mother was seized with a pang of envy at the girl's beauty.