He never went anywhere except to church; he never took part in Carlisle's simple social life; even with most men he was distant and reserved; as for women, he never spoke to or looked at them; if one spoke to him, even if she were a matronly old mother in Israel, he was at once in an agony of painful blushes.

He had no friends in the sense of companions; to all outward appearance his life was solitary and devoid of any human interest.
He had no housekeeper; but his old house, furnished as it had been in his mother's lifetime, was cleanly and daintily kept.

The quaint rooms were as free from dust and disorder as a woman could have had them.

This was known, because Jasper Dale occasionally had his hired man's wife, Mrs.Griggs, in to scrub for him.

On the morning she was expected he betook himself to woods and fields, returning only at night-fall.