He trusted no one but himself, took no man's word save his own, was self-reliant to the point of bitterness, and rife of proud suspicions.

Also, he had carried concealment to the plane of Art, and those who knew him best were most in the dark concerning him.

And yet Mr.Bayard made a specialty of verbal truth, and his word was a word of gold.
It was not that Mr.Bayard deceived men, he allowed them to deceive themselves.

They watched and they listened; and in the last they learned, commonly at the cost of a gaping wound in their bank balances, that what they thought they saw they did not see, and what they were sure they heard they did not hear; that from the beginning they had been the victims of self-constructed delusions, and were cast away by errors all their own.

Once burned, twice wise; and the paradox crept upon Wall and Broad Streets, as mosses creep upon stones, that the more one knew of Mr.Bayard the less one was aware of.