He was a man of good breeding, and more than agreeable manners--with a large topographical experience, and a social experience far from restricted, for, as I have already mentioned, he had travelled much, and in the company of persons of high position; and had Joan been less ignorant of things belonging to her proper station, she would have found yet more to interest her in him.

But being a man of some insight, and possessed also of considerable versatility, so that, readily discovering any perculiarity, he was equally ready to meet it, he laid himself out to talk to her of the things, and in the ways, which he thought she would like.

To discover, however, is not to understand.

No longer young enough, as he said to himself, to be greatly interested in anything but GETTING ON, he could yet, among the contents of the old property-room in his brain, easily lay his hands on many things to help him in the part he chose as the fittest to represent himself.

The greater part of conventionally honest men try to look the thing they would like to be--that being at the same time the way they would like others to see them; others, along with what they would like to be, act that which they would only like to appear; the downright rascal cares only to look what will serve his purpose; and the honest man thinks only of being, and of being to his fellows.
But even had Jermyn only taken upon him to imagine himself in love with a woman like Lady Joan, he must soon have become, more or less, actually in love with her.