.

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES.
Miriam's manner toward him was the same as it had always been so long as he could remember.

He had once thought--indeed, he had made to her the accusation--that she was always conscious of the social gulf existing between them; that she always remembered that she was by birth and breeding a lady, whereas he was the son of an obscure Frenchman who was nothing but a clockmaker whose name could be read (and can to this day be deciphered) on a hundred timepieces in remote East Anglian farms.
Since his change of fortune he had, as all men who rise to a great height or sink to the depths will tell, noted a corresponding change in his friends.

Even Captain Clubbe had altered, and the affection which peeped out at times almost against his puritanical will seemed to have suffered a chill.

The men of Farlingford, and even those who had sailed in "The Last Hope" with him, seemed to hold him at a distance.