The grave gentleman felt himself more and more fascinated by his clever nephew, whose fresh, demonstrative youth seemed a compendium of experiences so strangely numerous.

It appeared to him that Felix must know a great deal; he would like to learn what he thought about some of those things as regards which his own conversation had always been formal, but his knowledge vague.

Felix had a confident, gayly trenchant way of judging human actions which Mr.Wentworth grew little by little to envy; it seemed like criticism made easy.

Forming an opinion--say on a person's conduct--was, with Mr.Wentworth, a good deal like fumbling in a lock with a key chosen at hazard.

He seemed to himself to go about the world with a big bunch of these ineffectual instruments at his girdle.