She wore dingy old silk gowns and appalling bonnets, and mantles dripping with rusty fringes and bugle beads, but these mitigated not in the least the unflinching arrogance of her bearing, or the simple, intolerant rudeness which she considered proper and becoming in persons like herself.

She did not of course allow that there existed many persons like herself.
That society rejoiced in this fact was but the stamp of its inferiority and folly.

While she pinched herself and harried her few hirelings at Stornham it was necessary for Sir Nigel to show himself in town and present as decent an appearance as possible.

His vanity was far too arrogant to allow of his permitting himself to drop out of the world to which he could not afford to belong.

That he should have been forgotten or ignored would have been intolerable to him.