Even the sermonizing platitudes the vicar had delivered himself of--chiefly because something seemed to be professionally required of him in the presence of a man of Knight's proclivities--were swallowed whole.

The presence of Elfride led him not merely to tolerate that kind of talk from the necessities of ordinary courtesy; but he listened to it--took in the ideas with an enjoyable make-believe that they were proper and necessary, and indulged in a conservative feeling that the face of things was complete.
Entering her room that evening Elfride found a packet for herself on the dressing-table.

How it came there she did not know.

She tremblingly undid the folds of white paper that covered it.

Yes; it was the treasure of a morocco case, containing those treasures of ornament she had refused in the daytime.
Elfride dressed herself in them for a moment, looked at herself in the glass, blushed red, and put them away.