on one of the rare occasions when the subject was touched between them.
To that she credited the greater part of her obscure dissatisfaction with
conditions which she described as mean.

The latter evidently didn't disturb her mother or grandfather; she
realized that the long-drawn silent severity of the old man had crushed
what spirit her mother may have had. It was clear that the elder woman
had been very pretty, with wide fluttering eyes which made you think of
gray moths, and delicately colored cheeks; but all that had been crushed,
too. She was meek in a way that filled her daughter with determined
resentment and fear. The resentment sprang from the silent assertion that
she wouldn't be worn down like that; the fear followed the realization of
the rigid power of the old man and the weight of all that held her
powerless to escape. Naturally she was rather cheerful than somber, an
involuntary gayety rose from her in the drabbest moments; she even defied
Barzil Dunsack with ribbons and flowers on her bonnet.

The prospect from her window offered no relief from the interior; it was
true that in the other direction she could catch glimpses of the harbor,
by leaning out she could get the comparatively full sweep at the bottom
of the street; but there were usually things ugly and restraining between
her and the freedom of the horizon. Her favorite place had been at the
edge of the grass above the tide; but, since his return, Edward Dunsack
had hit upon it too, and his proximity made her increasingly uneasy. For
one thing he talked to himself out loud, principally in Chinese, and the
sliding unintelligible tongue, accompanied by the sight of his gaunt
yellow face, his inattentive fixed eyes, gave her an icy shiver. It was
almost worse when he conversed with her in a palpable effort at an effect
of sympathy.