Her reception of him was perfect--unstudied, graceful, natural; and he looking at her, thought her more beautiful than ever.
"You were reading," he said; "have I disturbed you ?" "No; Owen Meredith is a favorite poet of mine; there is something very unworldly and beautiful about his verses." "That is why you like them--you are so unworldly yourself." "Perhaps so, in one sense.

I have just sufficient tinge of it about me to teach me that whatever are my thoughts and opinions, if they differ much from other people's, I must keep them to myself, unless, as is the case now, I meet a congenial soul." A view of the subject which was quite new to Basil.
"I thought originality was a sign of genius," he replied, "and that people admired it." She smiled with an air of superiority that left him miles behind.
"My observation teaches me that there is nothing worldly people disapprove of so highly as originality," she said.

"To be more clever than your neighbor is a crime they never pardon." Basil, drinking in the beauty of that marvelous face, and the light of those lovely eyes, learned more worldly wisdom in one hour from the lovely lips of Lady Amelie than he had ever learned before..