I always felt a peculiar pity and sympathy for your mother." Her voice choked, for it was, perhaps, as spontaneous an expression of her emotions as she had ever permitted herself.
"Thank you, ma'am," replied Molly simply, and the title of respect to which Reuben had trained her dropped unconsciously from her lips.

She honestly liked Kesiah, though, in common with the rest of her little world, she had fallen into the habit of regarding her as a person whom it was hardly worth one's while to consider.

Mrs.Gay had so completely effaced her sister that the rough edges of Kesiah's character were hardly visible beneath the little lady's enveloping charm.
"It is natural that you should have felt bitterly toward your father," began the older woman again in a trembling voice, "but I hope you realize that the thought of his wrong to you and your mother saddened his last hours." To her surprise Molly received the remark almost passionately.
"How could that give me back my mother's ruined life ?" she demanded.
"I know, dear, but the fact remains that he was your father---" "Oh, I don't care in the least about the fact," retorted Molly, with her pretty rustic attempt at a shrug, which implied, in this case, that the government of nature, like that of society, rested solely on the consent of the governed.

What was clear to Kesiah was that this rebellion against the injustice of the universe, as well as against the expiation of Mr.Jonathan, was the outcome of a strong, though undisciplined, moral passion within her.

In her way, Molly was as stern a moralist as Sarah Revercomb, but she derived her convictions from no academic system of ethics.