A sort of respect underlay all his patronising good-nature or caprices with her.

But still he had got into the habit of some feeble flirtation, a little affair, and at first he missed it very much.

He didn't care a straw for Miss Townsend; he never had.

He thought her plain and tedious; she bored him more than any woman he had ever met, and yet he had slipped into a silly sort of intrigue, beginning by a few words of pity or sympathy to her, and by the idea that she looked up to him in admiration.

He was very much ashamed of it and of the circumstances; he was not proud of his conquest with her, as he generally was.