Most of them were of a different world to mine, and we could not mix, so 'twas right that our deportment should be that of two dissimilar but amiable nations bowing to each other across a frontier.
All this was a great ease, but it brought one rueful consequence.
Elspeth grew cold to me.

Women, I suppose, have to condescend, and protect, and pity.

When I was an outcast she was ready to shelter me; but now that I was in some degree of favour with others the need for this was gone, and she saw me without illusion in all my angularity and roughness.

She must have heard of the duel, and jumped to the conclusion that the quarrel had been about herself, which was not the truth.

The notion irked her pride, that her name should ever be brought into the brawls of men.