He sat before her now a frank, determined-looking young Englishman, in whose honest eyes admiration of herself could not be concealed.

Indignation and surprise struggled for supremacy.
"It's odd," remarked Mr.Wilks, who had a happy knack at times of saying the wrong thing, "it's odd you should 'ave 'appened to come just at the same time as Miss Kate did." "It's my good fortune," said Hardy, with a slight bow.

Then he cocked a malignant eye at the innocent Mr.Wilks, and wondered at what age men discarded the useless habit of blushing.

Opposite him sat Miss Nugent, calmly observant, the slightest suggestion of disdain in her expression.
Framed in the queer, high-backed old chair which had belonged to Mr.
Wilks's grandfather, she made a picture at which Jem Hardy continued to gaze with respectful ardour.

A hopeless sense of self-depreciation possessed him, but the idea that Murchison should aspire to so much goodness and beauty made him almost despair of his sex.