To a girl or matron whom he liked, he said, in tone if not in phrase, "Let us be comrades." In his opinion this tended notably to the purifying of the social atmosphere.

It was the introduction of simple honesty into relations commonly marked--and corrupted--by every form of disingenuousness.

Moreover, it was the great first step to that reconstruction of society at large which every thinker saw to be imperative and imminent.
But Constance Bride knew nothing of this, and in her ignorance could not but misinterpret the young man's demeanor.

She felt it to be brusque; she imagined it to imply a purposed oblivion of things in the past.

Taken together with Mrs.Lashmar's way of receiving her at the vicarage, it stirred in her heart and mind (already prone to bitterness) a resentment which, of all things, she shrank from betraying.
"Is Lady Ogram approachable ?" Dyce asked, when his companion had walked a few paces without speaking.