She likes you, and she's the kind of woman to be sympathising and make a fuss over another woman--particularly one who is under the weather and can be sentimentalised over." Hester was pushing crumbs about on the tablecloth with her knife, and a dull red showed itself on her cheek.
"I am not going to make capital of--circumstances," she said sullenly.
"I won't." She was not a woman easily managed, and Osborn had had reason on more than one occasion to realise a certain wicked stubbornness in her.

There was a look in her eye now which frightened him.

It was desperately necessary that she should be kept in a tractable mood.

As she was a girl with affections, and he was a man without any, he knew what to do.
He got up and went to her side, putting his arm round her shoulders as he sat in a chair near her.

"Now, little woman," he said.