It was like her gowns, or her education, a matter of course; a trustworthy, agreeable part of her.

She had never once in her life shuddered at a glimpse of any vice in herself, or cried to God in agony, even to grant her a wish.
But she knew that Robert Waldeaux's son would be safer in the pulpit.
He could take rank with scholars there, too.
She inspected him now anxiously, trying to see him with the eyes of these Oxford magnates.

Nobody would guess that he was only twenty-two.
The bald spot on his crown and the spectacles gave him a scholastic air, and the finely cut features and a cold aloofness in his manner spoke plainly, she thought, of his good descent and high pursuits.
Frances herself had a drop of vagabond blood which found comrades for her among every class and color.

But there was not an atom of the tramp in her son's well-built and fashionably clothed body.

He never had had a single intimate friend even when he was a boy.