His mind was directed on the visit of Aminta to Lady de Culme, and the tolerably wonderful twist whereby Mrs.Lawrence Finchley had vowed herself to his girl's interests.

And he blamed neither of them; only he could not understand how it had been effected, for Aminta and Mrs.Lawrence had not been on such particularly intimate terms last week or yesterday.

His ejaculation, 'Women!' was, as he knew, merely ignorance roaring behind a mask of sarcasm.

But it allied him with all previous generations on the male side, and that was its virtue.

His view of the shifty turns of women got no further, for the reason that he took small account of the operations of the feelings, to the sole exercise of which he by system condemned the sex.
He was also insensibly half a grain more soured by the homage of those poor schoolboys, who called to him to take it for his reward in a country whose authorities had snubbed, whose Parliament had ignored, whose Press had abused him.