Yes, he was conscious--he was very conscious; so Bernard reflected during the two or three first days of his visit to his friend.

Gordon knew it must seem strange to so irreverent a critic that a man who had once aspired to the hand of so intelligent a girl--putting other things aside--as Angela Vivian should, as the Ghost in "Hamlet" says, have "declined upon" a young lady who, in force of understanding, was so very much Miss Vivian's inferior; and this knowledge kept him ill at his ease and gave him a certain pitiable awkwardness.

Bernard's sense of the anomaly grew rapidly less acute; he made various observations which helped it to seem natural.

Blanche was wonderfully pretty; she was very graceful, innocent, amusing.

Since Gordon had determined to marry a little goose, he had chosen the animal with extreme discernment.