He seemed exactly on a par with the second-rate friends with whom Sybell loved to surround herself.

Hugh and Dick were taking their revenge on the rival who blocked their way.
Whatever their faults might be, they were gentlemen, and Mr.Tristram was only "a perfect gentleman." Rachel had not known the difference when she was young.

She saw it now.
"I trust, Miss West," said the deep voice of Mr.Harvey, revolving himself and his solitaire slowly towards her, that I have your sympathy in the great cause to which I have dedicated myself, the emancipation of woman." "I thought the new woman had effected her own emancipation," said Rachel.
Mr.Harvey paid no more attention to her remark than any one with a theory to propound which must be delivered to the world as a whole.
"I venture to think," he continued, his heavy, lustreless eyes coming to a stand-still upon her, "that though I accept in all reverence the position of woman as the equal of man, as promulgated in _The Princess_, by our lion-hearted Laureate, nevertheless I advance beyond him in that respect.

I hold"-- in a voice calculated to impress the whole table--"that woman is man's superior, and that she degrades herself when she endeavors to place herself on an equality with him." There was a momentary silence, like that which travellers tell us succeeds the roar of the lion in his primeval forest, silencing even the twitter of the birds.
"How true that is!" said Sybell, awed by the lurid splendor of Mr.
Harvey's genius.

"Woman is man's superior, not his equal.