It was these which were now engrossing him.
For some time past he had been working underground--digging out the foundations--and as a rule invisible as a mole within them--of a tedious courtship undertaken under the sustaining conviction that marriage is much more important to a woman than to a man.

This point of view was not to be wondered at, for Wentworth, like many other eligible, suspiciously diffident men, had so far come into contact mainly with that large battalion of women who forage for themselves, and who take upon themselves with assiduity the work of acquaintanceship and courtship.

He had never quite liked their attentions or been deceived by their "chance meetings." But his conclusions respecting the whole sex had been formed by the conduct of the female skirmishers who had thrown themselves across his path; and he, in common with many other secluded masculine violets, innocently supposed that he was irresistible to the other sex; and that when he met the _right_ woman she would set to work like the others, only with a little more tact, and the marriage would be conveniently arrived at.
But Fay showed no signs of setting to work, no alacrity, no apparent grasp of the situation: I mean of the possible but by no means certain turn which affairs might one day take.
At first Wentworth was incredulous, but he remembered in time that one of the tactics of women is to retreat in order to lure on a further masculine advance.

Then he became offended, stiff with injured dignity, almost anxious.

But he communed with himself, analysed his feelings under various headings, and discovered that he was not discouraged.