People who disagreed on every other subject agreed in liking Vincy.
But he did not care in the least for acquaintances, and spent much ingenuity in trying to avoid them; he only liked intimate friends, and of all he had perhaps the Ottleys were his greatest favourites.
His affection for them dated from a summer they had spent in the same hotel in France.

He had become extraordinarily interested in them.

He delighted in Bruce, but had with Edith, of course, more mutual understanding and intellectual sympathy, and though they met constantly, his friendship with her had never been misunderstood.
Frivolous friends of his who did not know her might amuse themselves by being humorous and flippant about Vincy's little Ottleys, but no-one who had ever seen them together could possibly make a mistake.

They were an example of the absurdity of a tradition--'the world's' proneness to calumny.

Such friendships, when genuine, are never misconstrued.