s in
her power to surround her mother. In this Philip vied with her; for
besides his old love, and new pity for his aunt Bell, he never
forgot how she had welcomed him to Haytersbank, and favoured his
love to Sylvia, in the yearning days when he little hoped he should
ever win his cousin to be his wife. But even if he had not had these
grateful and affectionate feelings towards the poor woman, he would
have done much for her if only to gain the sweet, rare smiles which
his wife never bestowed upon him so freely as when she saw him
attending to 'mother,' for so both of them now called Bell. For her
creature comforts, her silk gowns, and her humble luxury, Sylvia did
not care; Philip was almost annoyed at the indifference she often
manifested to all his efforts to surround her with such things. It
was even a hardship to her to leave off her country dress, her
uncovered hair, her linsey petticoat, and loose bed-gown, and to don
a stiff and stately gown for her morning dress. Sitting in the dark
parlour at the back of the shop, and doing 'white work,' was much
more wearying to her than running out into the fields to bring up
the cows, or spinning wool, or making up butter. She sometimes
thought to herself that it was a strange kind of life where there
were no out-door animals to look after; the 'ox and the ass' had
hitherto come into all her ideas of humanity; and her care and
gentleness had made the dumb creatures round her father's home into
mute friends with loving eyes, looking at her as if wistful to speak
in words the grateful regard that she could read without the poor
expression of language.

She missed the free open air, the great dome of sky above the
fields; she rebelled against the necessity of 'dressing' (as she
called it) to go out, although she acknowledged that it was a
necessity where the first step beyond the threshold must be into a
populous street.

It is possible that Philip was right at one time when he had thought
to win her by material advantages; but the old vanities had been
burnt out of her by the hot iron of acute suffering. A great deal of
passionate feeling still existed, concealed and latent; but at this
period it appeared as though she were indifferent to most things,
and had lost the power of either hoping or fearing much. She was
stunned into a sort of temporary numbness on most points; those on
which she was sensitive being such as referred to the injustice and
oppression of her father