Like other men, he had felt the attraction of her unaffected grace and gentleness on the few occasions when he had been in her company--and that was all.

If he had belonged to the present generation he would, under the circumstances, have fallen into one of the besetting sins of England in these days--the tendency (to borrow an illustration from the stage) to "strike an attitude" in the presence of a social emergency.

A man of the present period, in Sir Patrick's position, would have struck an attitude of (what is called) chivalrous respect; and would have addressed Anne in a tone of ready-made sympathy, which it was simply impossible for a stranger really to feel.

Sir Patrick affected nothing of the sort.

One of the besetting sins of _his_ time was the habitual concealment of our better selves--upon the whole, a far less dangerous national error than the habitual advertisement of our better selves, which has become the practice, public and privately, of society in this age.