The girl in white, the centre of a large party in the hall, was flirting to her heart's content.

Philip would have dearly liked to stay and flirt with her himself; but his mother, terrified by his pallor and fatigue after the exertion of the shoot, had hurried him off to take a warm bath and rest before dinner.

So that Anderson and Elizabeth were alone.
Conversation between them did not move easily.

Elizabeth was conscious of an oppression against which it seemed vain to fight.

Up to the moment of his sailing from Canada his letters had been frank and full, the letters of a deeply attached friend, though with no trace in them of the language of love.