If a man's grief does not awaken his dignity, then he has none.

In that event, grief is not even respectable.

And so it was with Leroy Mortimer when Lydia at last turned on him.

If you caress an Angora too long and too persistently it runs away.

And before it goes it scratches.
Under all the physical degeneration of mind and flesh there had still remained in Mortimer the capacity for animal affection; and that does not mean sensuality alone, but generosity and a sort of routine devotion as characteristic components of a character which had now disintegrated into the simplest and most primitive elements.
Lydia Vyse left Saratoga when the financial stringency began to make it unpleasant for her to remain.