Her thin hands lay idle a moment on her lap, and leaning towards the window beside her, she looked out an instant into the snowy twilight.

Her mind was full of its usual calm scorn for those--her daughter included--who supposed that the human lot was to be mended by a rise in weekly wages, or that suffering has any necessary dependence on the amount of commodities of which a man disposes.

What hardship is there in starving and scrubbing and toiling?
Had she ever seen a labourer's wife scrubbing her cottage floor without envy, without moral thirst?
Is it these things that kill, or any of the great simple griefs and burdens?
Doth man live by bread alone?
The whole language of social and charitable enthusiasm often raised in her a kind of exasperation.
So Marcella would be rich, excessively rich, even now.

Outside the amount settled upon her, the figures of Aldous Raeburn's present income, irrespective of the inheritance which would come to him on his grandfather's death, were a good deal beyond what even Mr.Boyce--upon whom the daily spectacle of the Maxwell wealth exercised a certain angering effect--had supposed.
Mrs.Boyce had received the news of the engagement with astonishment, but her after-acceptance of the situation had been marked by all her usual philosophy.

Probably behind the philosophy there was much secret relief.