And women never--except Miss Sargent, but she went off at lunch-time and gave herself airs.

There they sat quietly of a night reading, she thought.
Not going to music-halls; not looking in at shop windows; not wearing each other's clothes, like Robertson who had worn her shawl, and she had worn his waistcoat, which Jacob could only do very awkwardly; for he liked Tom Jones.
There it lay on her lap, in double columns, price three and sixpence; the mystic book in which Henry Fielding ever so many years ago rebuked Fanny Elmer for feasting on scarlet, in perfect prose, Jacob said.

For he never read modern novels.

He liked Tom Jones.
"I do like Tom Jones," said Fanny, at five-thirty that same day early in April when Jacob took out his pipe in the arm-chair opposite.
Alas, women lie! But not Clara Durrant.

A flawless mind; a candid nature; a virgin chained to a rock (somewhere off Lowndes Square) eternally pouring out tea for old men in white waistcoats, blue-eyed, looking you straight in the face, playing Bach.