His type was rather chastened than heightened, and he sat there moreover with a primary discretion quite in the note of the deference that from the first, with his friend of the elder fashion, he had taken as imposed.
He had a strong sense for shades of respect and was now careful to loll scarcely more than with an official superior.

"If you ask me," Mr.
Longdon presently continued, "why at this hour of the night--after a day at best too heterogeneous--I don't keep over till to-morrow whatever I may have to say, I can only tell you that I appeal to you now because I've something on my mind that I shall sleep the better for being rid of." There was space to circulate in front of the haut-pas, where he had still paced and still swung his glasses; but with these words he had paused, leaning against the billiard-table, to meet the interested urbanity of the answer they produced.

"Are you very sure that having got rid of it you WILL sleep?
Is it a pure confidence," Vanderbank said, "that you do me the honour to make me?
Is it something terrific that requires a reply, so that I shall have to take account on my side of the rest I may deprive you of ?" "Don't take account of anything--I'm myself a man who always takes too much.

It isn't a matter about which I press you for an immediate answer.
You can give me no answer probably without a good deal of thought.

I'VE thought a good deal--otherwise I wouldn't speak.