These two persons were not only on ill-terms, they disliked each other with the intensity which can only be engendered by thirty years of a marriage such as, but for public opinion, would not have lasted thirty weeks.
Their reciprocal disgust was physical, mental, moral.

It could not be concealed from their friends; all Polterham smiled over it; yet the Mumbrays were regarded as a centre of moral and religious influence, a power against the encroaches of rationalism and its attendant depravity.

Neither of them could point to dignified ancestry; by steady persistence in cant and snobbishness--the genuine expression of their natures--they had pushed to a prominent place, and feared nothing so much as depreciation in the eyes of the townsfolk.

Raglan and Serena were causing them no little anxiety; both, though in different ways, might prove an occasion of scandal.

When Eustace Glazzard began to present himself at the house, Mr.Mumbray welcomed the significant calls.