His self-important loquacity ceased, and his condescending smile passed into a sharp, reticent, business look.

He knitted his shaggy brows, contracted that coarsely-hung, but resolute mouth, in which lay the secret of his success in life, buttoned up his coat, and stuck his hands behind him over his coat-tails.

As he stood there on his own hearth, with all his comfortable splendors about him--a man who had made his own money, hardly and honestly, who from the days when he was a poor errand-lad had had no one to trust to but himself, yet had managed always to help himself, ay, and others too--Hilary's stern sense of justice contrasted him with the graceful young man who sat opposite to him, so much his inferior, and so much his debtor.

She owned that Peter Ascott had a right to look both contemptuously and displeased.
"A very pretty story, but I almost expected it," said he.
And there he stopped.

In his business capacity he was too acute a man to be a man of many words, and his feelings, if they existed, were kept to himself.
"It all comes to this, young man," he continued, after an uncomfortable pause, in which Hilary could have counted every beat of her heart, and even Ascott played with his wine glass in a nervous kind of way--"you want money, and you think I'm sure to give it, because it wouldn't be pleasant just now to have discreditable stories going about concerning the future Mrs.Ascott's relatives.
You're quite right, it wouldn't.