He was suddenly seized by a new-born anxiety, for he had been so long used to the open purse and the unchecked stream of gold, had taken it so much as a matter of course, as not to realise the possibility of its being withdrawn.
He was conscious of a kind of meanness and ugly sordidness in the suggestion; but the stake--his future, his career, his position in the world--was too high to allow him to be too chivalrous.

His sense of the real facts was perverted.

He said to himself that he must be practical.
Moved by the new thought, he seized a time-table and looked up the trains.

He had been ten days in town, receiving every morning a little note from Hylda telling of what she had done each day; a calm, dutiful note, written without pretence, and out of a womanly affection with which she surrounded the man who, it seemed once--such a little while ago--must be all in all to her.

She had no element of pretence in her.
What she could give she gave freely, and it was just what it appeared to be.