His interest in her was not strictly personal; she moved and spoke before him as a typical woman, not as the daughter of Martin Warricombe and the sister of Buckland.

Here at last opened to his view that sphere of female society which he had known as remotely existing, the desperate aim of ambition.
Conventional women--but was not the phrase tautological?
In the few females who have liberated their souls, was not much of the woman inevitably sacrificed, and would it not be so for long years to come?
On the other hand, such a one as Sidwell might be held a perfect creature, perfect in relation to a certain stage of human development.
Look at her, as she sat conversing with Moorhouse, soft candle-light upon her face; compare her on the one hand with an average emancipated girl, on the other with a daughter of the people.

How unsatisfying was the former; the latter, how repulsive! Here one had the exquisite mean, the lady as England has perfected her towards the close of this nineteenth century.

A being of marvellous delicacy, of purest instincts, of unsurpassable sweetness.

Who could not detail her limitations, obvious and, in certain moods, irritating enough?
These were nothing to the point, unless one would roam the world a hungry idealist; and Godwin was weary of the famined pilgrimage.
The murmur of amiable voices softened him to the reception of all that was good in his present surroundings, and justified in the light of sentiment his own dishonour.