"I've no presence of mind.

I see the right thing when it's too late, and when I've made myself appear a bounder.

How many thousand times have I blundered in this way! A man like me ought to live alone--as I've a very fair chance of doing in future." His walk did him no good, and on his return he passed a black evening.
With Mrs.Hopper, who came as usual to get dinner for him, he held little conversation; in a few days he would have to tell her what had befallen him, or invent some lie to account for the change in his arrangements, and this again tortured Will's nerves.

In one sense of the word, no man was less pretentious; but his liberality of thought and behaviour consisted with a personal pride which was very much at the mercy of circumstance.

Even as he could not endure subjection, so did he shrink from the thought of losing dignity in the eyes of his social inferiors.