The Cathedral by Hugh Walpole

Falk Brandon knew quite well that his mother was watching him.

It was a strange truth that until this return of his from Oxford he had never considered his mother at all. It was not that he had grown to disregard her, as do many sons, because of the monotonous regularity of her presence. Nor was it that he despised her because he seemed so vastly to have outgrown her. He had not been unkind nor patronising nor contemptuous -- he had simply not yet thought about her. The circumstances of his recent return, however, had forced him to consider every one in the house. He had his secret preoccupation that seemed so absorbing and devastating to him that he could not believe that every one around him would not guess it. He soon discovered that his father was too cock-sure and his sister too innocent to guess anything.