Cecilia had, moreover, a turn for sarcasm, and her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a lurking scratch in it.

Rowland remembered that, for him, she was all smiles, and suspected, awkwardly, that he ministered not a little to her sense of the irony of things.

And in truth, with his means, his leisure, and his opportunities, what had he done?
He had an unaffected suspicion of his uselessness.

Cecilia, meanwhile, cut out her own dresses, and was personally giving her little girl the education of a princess.
This time, however, he presented himself bravely enough; for in the way of activity it was something definite, at least, to be going to Europe and to be meaning to spend the winter in Rome.

Cecilia met him in the early dusk at the gate of her little garden, amid a studied combination of floral perfumes.