I don't care for any--damages." "It is perfectly proper for you to claim them, if," he added cautiously, "they are within reason--" "Mr.Portlaw!" "What ?" he asked, alarmed.
"I would not touch a penny! I meant to give it to the schools, here--whatever I recovered....

Your misunderstanding of me is abominable!" He hung his head, heavy-witted, confused as a stupid schoolboy, feeling, helplessly, his clumsiness of mind and body.
Something of this may have been perceptible to her--may have softened her ideas concerning him--ideas which had accumulated bitterness during the year of his misbehaviour and selfish neglect.

Her instinct divined in his apparently sullen attitude the slow intelligence and mental perturbation of a wilful, selfish boy made stupid through idleness and self-indulgence.

Even what had been clean-cut, attractive, in his face and figure was being marred and coarsened by his slothful habits to an extent that secretly dismayed her; for she had always thought him very handsome; and, with that natural perversity of selection, finding in him a perfect foil to her own character, had been seriously inclined to like him.
Attractions begin in that way, sometimes, where the gentler is the stronger, the frailer, the dominant character; and the root is in the feminine instinct to care for, develop, and make the most of what palpably needs a protectorate.
Without comprehending her own instinct, Mrs.Ascott had found the preliminary moulding of Portlaw an agreeable diversion; had rather taken for granted that she was doing him good; and was correspondingly annoyed when he parted his moorings and started drifting aimlessly as a derelict scow awash, floundering seaward without further notice of the trim little tug standing by and amiably ready to act as convoy.
Now, sitting her saddle in silence she surveyed him, striving to understand him--his recent indifference, his deterioration, the present figure he was cutting.

And it seemed to her a trifle sad that he had no one to tell him a few wholesome truths.
"Mr.Portlaw," she said, "do you know that you have been exceedingly rude to me ?" "Yes, I--do know it." "Why ?" she asked simply.
"I don't know." "Didn't you care for our friendship?
Didn't it amuse and interest you?
How could you have done the things you did--in the way you did ?...