To all appearances,
they worked together and conversed very much as they had been
wont to do; but Marian was made to feel in many subtle ways that
her father no longer had complete confidence in her, no longer
took the same pleasure as formerly in the skill and
conscientiousness of her work, and Yule on his side perceived too
clearly that the girl was preoccupied with something other than
her old wish to aid and satisfy him, that she had a new life of
her own alien to, and in some respects irreconcilable with, the
existence in which he desired to confirm her. There was no
renewal of open disagreement, but their conversations frequently
ended by tacit mutual consent, at a point which threatened
divergence; and in Yule's case every such warning was a cause of
intense irritation. He feared to provoke Marian, and this fear
was again a torture to his pride.
Beyond the fact that his daughter was in constant communication
with the Miss Milvains, he knew, and could discover, nothing of
the terms on which she stood with the girls' brother, and this
ignorance was harder to bear than full assurance of a
disagreeable fact would have been.
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