It was good to be in such company, and to feel that he was equal with the best.

He had not always been the peer of such men.

There had been an era of obscurity out of which he had slowly emerged, and therefore he had the larger pride and self-satisfaction in the position he now held.
Mrs.Birtwell was a woman of another order.

All her life she had been used to the elegancy that a wealthy parentage gave, and to which her husband had been, until within a few years, an entire stranger.

She was "to the manner born," he a parvenu with a restless ambition to outshine.