If you felt free to pick and choose from among young men in the Guards or young attaches in the Diplomatic Service with twopence a year, you might get beauty or wit or temperament or all three by good luck, but if you were of a royal house of New York or Chicago, you would probably feel you must draw lines and choose only such splendours as accorded with, even while differing from, your own.
Any possible connection of himself with such a case did not present itself to him.

If it had done so, he would have counted himself, haughtily, as beyond the pale.

It was for other men to do things of the sort; a remote antagonism of his whole being warred against the mere idea.

It was bigoted prejudice, perhaps, but it was a strong thing.
A lovely shoulder and a brilliant head set on a long and slender neck have no nationality which can prevent a man's glance turning naturally towards them.

His turned again during the last act of the play, and at a moment when he saw something rather like the thing he had seen when the Meridiana moved away from the dock and the exalted Miss Vanderpoel leaning upon the rail had held out her arms towards the child who had brought his toy to her as a farewell offering.
Sitting by her to-night was a boy with a crooked back--Mount Dunstan remembered hearing that the Anstruthers had a deformed son--and she was leaning towards him, her hand resting on his shoulder, explaining something he had not quite grasped in the action of the play.