Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
Third-Person (Limited Omniscient)
The narration pretty much hitches its wagons to Elizabeth and her point-of-view. We see what she sees and we are privy to what she's feeling throughout the story, though this is all given to us from an invisible and all-knowing narrator, not from the first-person perspective. For example, when she hears that Walt has died in an incident at the mine, we see her mind go into a tailspin of reactions and emotions:
Life with its smoky burning gone from him, had left him apart and utterly alien to her. And she knew what a stranger he was to her. In her womb was ice of fear, because of this separate stranger with whom she had been living as one flesh. Was this what it all meant—utter, intact separateness, obscured by heat of living? In dread she turned her face away. The fact was too deadly. (2.128)
In this moment, we see the utter devastation and fear that Walter's death has provoked in her and how alone she now feels. By contrast, everything we know about the other characters and their emotions pretty much comes from the "outside"—that is, dialogue or their behavior, rather than from plunging into their emotional state.