Many a time in his life he had kissed and ridden away, and had been unannoyed by conscience.

But in proportion as conscience had neglected him before, it ground him now between the stones, and he saw himself as he was.

Come of a gentleman's family, he knew he was no gentleman.

Having learned the forms and courtesies of life, having infused his whole career with a spirit of gay bonhomie, he knew that in truth he was a swaggerer; that bad taste, infamous bad taste, had marked almost everything that he had done in his life.

He had passed as one of the nobility, but he knew that all true men, all he had ever met, must have read him through and through.