Was it possible--she seemed to have hinted it--that she had thought him a very grand personage till now, and that he had disgraced himself in her eyes?
If a man had suspected Tom of such a feeling, I fear he would have cared little, save how to restore the balance by making a fool of the man who fancied him a fool: but no male self-sufficiency or pride is proof against the contempt of woman; and Tom slunk along by the schoolmistress's side, as if he had been one of her naughtiest school-children.

He tried, of course, to brazen it out to his own conscience.

He had done no harm, after all; indeed, never seriously meant any.

She was making a ridiculous fuss about nothing.

It was all part and parcel of her methodistical cant.