He had become composed enough to see such difficulties as it involved, and such consequences as it implied.

These had fretted him with a passing trouble; for these he plainly discerned.

As for the cruelty and the treachery of the thing he meditated doing--that consideration never crossed the limits of his mental view.

His position toward the man whose life he had preserved was the position of a dog.
The "noble animal" who has saved you or me from drowning will fly at your throat or mine, under certain conditions, ten minutes afterward.
Add to the dog's unreasoning instinct the calculating cunning of a man; suppose yourself to be in a position to say of some trifling thing, "Curious! at such and such a time I happened to pick up such and such an object; and now it turns out to be of some use to me!"-- and there you have an index to the state of Geoffrey's feeling toward his friend when he recalled the past or when he contemplated the future.

When Arnold had spoken to him at the critical moment, Arnold had violently irritated him; and that was all.
The same impenetrable insensibility, the same primitively natural condition of the moral being, prevented him from being troubled by the slightest sense of pity for Anne.