It had, in days that seemed immeasurably remote--days when she had wondered whether she could marry Franklin--it had been difficult to see herself introducing him with any sense of achievement to Lady Blair or to the Collings, and she knew now, clearly, why: in Lady Blair's drawing-room, as in Devonshire and at Grimshaw Rectory, Franklin would have looked a funny little man.

How much more funny in the new setting.

What would he do in it?
What was it to mean to him?
What would any setting mean to Franklin in which he was to see her as no longer needing him?
For, and this was the worst of it, and in spite of happiness Althea felt it as a pang indeed, she no longer needed Franklin; and knowing this she longed at once to avoid and to atone to him.
She found him after her walk with Aunt Julia sitting behind a newspaper in the library.

Franklin always read the newspapers every morning, and it struck Althea as particularly touching that this good habit should be persevered in under his present circumstances.

She was so much touched by Franklin, the habit of old intimacy was so strong, that her own essential change of heart seemed effaced by the uprising of feeling for him.