"Did you wish to see me about anything, grandmother?"

Mrs. Conyers had not heard Isabel's quiet entrance. She was at the
window still: she turned softly in her chair and looked across the
darkened room to where Isabel sat facing her--a barely discernible
white figure.

From any other member other family she would roughly have demanded
the explanation she desired. She was the mother of strong men
(they were living far from her now), and even in his manhood no one
of them had ever crossed her will without bearing away the scars of
her anger, and always of her revenge. But before this grandchild,
whom she had reared from infancy, she felt the brute cowardice
which is often the only tribute that a debased nature can pay to
the incorruptible. Her love must have its basis in some abject
emotion: it took its origin from fear.

An unforeseen incident, occurring when Isabel was yet a child and
all but daily putting forth new growths of nature, rendered very
clear even then the developing antagonism and prospective
relationship of these two characters. In a company of ladies the
grandmother, drawing the conversation to herself, remarked with a
suggestive laugh that as there were no men present she would tell a
certain story. "Grandmother," interposed Isabel, vaguely startled,
"please do not say anything that you would not say before a man;"
and for an instant, amid the hush, the child and the woman looked
at each other like two repellent intelligences, accidentally
meeting out of the heavens and the pit.