He lifted his eyes and looked into hers.

"If I told you that I cared nothing about them in the way you intimate ?" "Then I should prefer to let you characterize your own conduct in continuing to come here for the year past, as you have done, and tacitly leading them on to infer differently." They both mechanically kept up the fiction of plurality in speaking of Christine, but there was no doubt in the mind of either which of the young ladies the other meant.
A good many thoughts went through Beaton's mind, and none of them were flattering.

He had not been unconscious that the part he had played toward this girl was ignoble, and that it had grown meaner as the fancy which her beauty had at first kindled in him had grown cooler.

He was aware that of late he had been amusing himself with her passion in a way that was not less than cruel, not because he wished to do so, but because he was listless and wished nothing.

He rose in saying: "I might be a little more lenient than you think, Mrs.Mandel; but I won't trouble you with any palliating theory.