This he had expected.

Christmas had ushered in a truce in which no guns were discharged, but remained sighted and pointed, ready to fire.
But though there was no change in his father, his mother seemed to Michael to be curiously altered; her mind, which, as has been already noticed, was usually in a stunned condition, seemed to have awakened like a child from its sleep, and to have begun vaguely crying in an inarticulate discomfort.

It was true that Petsy was no more, having succumbed to a bilious attack of unusual severity, but a second Petsy had already taken her place, and Lady Ashbridge sat with him--it was a gentleman Petsy this time--in her lap as before, and occasionally shed a tear or two over Petsy II.

in memory of Petsy I.But this did not seem to account for the wakening up of her mind and emotions into this state of depression and anxiety.

It was as if all her life she had been quietly dozing in the sun, and that the place where she sat had passed into the shade, and she had awoke cold and shivering from a bitter wind.