The unusual may take on an exaggeration of these; an excess of money, an excess of piety, is understood; but idiosyncrasy susceptible to no common translation is regarded with the hostility earned by the white crow, modified among law-abiding humans into tacit repudiation.

It is a sound enough social principle to distrust that which is not understood, like the strain of temperament inarticulate but vaguely manifest in the Murchisons.

Such a strain may any day produce an eccentric or a genius, emancipated from the common interests, possibly inimical to the general good; and when, later on, your genius takes flight or your eccentric sells all that he has and gives it to the poor, his fellow townsmen exchange shrewd nods before the vindicating fact.
Nobody knew it at all in Elgin, but this was the Murchisons' case.

They had produced nothing abnormal, but they had to prove that they weren't going to, and Stella was the last and most convincing demonstration.
Advena, bookish and unconventional, was regarded with dubiety.

She was out of the type; she had queer satisfactions and enthusiasms.