She was gentle, accessible, tenderly gracious, expressive, demonstrative, almost flattering.

From his own personal point of view Bernard had no complaint to make of this maidenly urbanity, but he kept reminding himself that he was not in question and that everything must be looked at in the light of Gordon's requirements.
There was all this time an absurd logical twist in his view of things.
In the first place he was not to judge at all; and in the second he was to judge strictly on Gordon's behalf.

This latter clause always served as a justification when the former had failed to serve as a deterrent.
When Bernard reproached himself for thinking too much of the girl, he drew comfort from the reflection that he was not thinking well.

To let it gradually filter into one's mind, through a superficial complexity of more reverent preconceptions, that she was an extremely clever coquette--this, surely, was not to think well! Bernard had luminous glimpses of another situation, in which Angela Vivian's coquetry should meet with a different appreciation; but just now it was not an item to be entered on the credit side of Wright's account.

Bernard wiped his pen, mentally speaking, as he made this reflection, and felt like a grizzled old book-keeper, of incorruptible probity.