He swings from one to the other.

He is terrified now lest this marriage should take place." "No wonder," interposed Mrs.Pettifer.
Pettifer made no comment upon the remark.
"Therefore," he continued, "he is anxious that I should discover in these reports some solid reason for believing that the verdict which acquitted Stella Ballantyne was a grave miscarriage of justice.

For any such reason must have weight." "Of course," said Mrs.Pettifer.
"And will justify him--this is his chief consideration--in withholding publicly his consent." "I see." Only a week ago Dick himself had observed that sentimental philosophers had a knack of breaking their heads against their own theories.

The words had been justified sooner than she had expected.
Mrs.Pettifer was not surprised at Harold Hazlewood's swift change any more than her husband had been.

Harold, to her thinking, was a sentimentalist and sentimentality was like a fir-tree--a thing of no deep roots and easily torn up.
"But I do not take that view, Margaret," continued her husband, and she looked at him with consternation.