resulted from the peculiar conditions of her life.

'Rather early, aren't you, Marian?' she said, as she closed the
door and came forward to take a seat.

'Yes; I have a little headache.'

'Oh, dear! Is that beginning again?'

Mrs Yule's speech was seldom ungrammatical, and her intonation
was not flagrantly vulgar, but the accent of the London poor,
which brands as with hereditary baseness, still clung to her
words, rendering futile such propriety of phrase as she owed to
years of association with educated people. In the same degree did
her bearing fall short of that which distinguishes a lady. The
London work-girl is rarely capable of raising herself or being
raised, to a place in life above that to which she was born; she
cannot learn how to stand and sit and move like a woman bred to
refinement, any more than she can fashion her tongue to graceful
speech. Mrs Yule's behaviour to Marian was marked with a singular
diffidence; she looked and spoke affectionately, but not with a
mother's freedom; one might have taken her for a trusted servant
waiting upon her mistress. Whenever opportunity offered, she
watched the girl in a curiously furtive way, that puzzled look on
her face becoming very noticeable. Her consciousness was never
able to accept as a familiar and unimportant fact the vast
difference between herself and her daughter. Marian's superiority
in native powers, in delicacy of feeling, in the results of
education, could never be lost sight of. Under ordinary
circumstances she addressed the girl as if tentatively; however