she did not prevent herself from inhaling as they passed her without so much as noticing her , the dun-coloured fatherless little girl who watched them so very quietly , without that interest being returned , and she wondered at the strange love and the stranger sad discomfort that came upon her at these times , wondering whether one of these men might be the father she had never found , and stranger wonder than this most certainly , as they in their strange gravity looked past her , smiling even as they passed her by .