The evil from which she now suffered was of the stuff of which much of the pain of life is made--a flimsy stuff that vanishes before the investigation of reason more surely than the stuff of our evanescent joys.

There was nothing that could be called incompatibility of temper between these two; no one saw more clearly than Sophia the generosity and courage of Mrs.Rexford's heart; no one else sympathised so deeply with her motherly cares, for no one else understood them half so well; and yet it might have been easier for Sophia Rexford to have lived in external peace with a covetous woman, able to appreciate and keep in steady view the relative importance of her ideas.
Meantime Mrs.Rexford went on talking.

She was generally unconscious of the other's intellectual disdain.

Pretty soon they heard bells and horses' feet that slackened at the gate.

Sophia stood up to look.
There was a comfortable sleigh, albeit somewhat battered and dingy, turning in at the gate.