He was brimful of compassion, but it was all for Cecily, none for the situation or for me.

(She would have marvelled, placidly, why he pitied her.

I am glad I can say that.) The primitive man in him rose up as Pope of nature and excommunicated me as a creature recusant to her functions.

Then deliberately Dacres undertook an office of consolation; and I fell to wondering, while Mrs.Morgan spoke her convictions plainly out, how far an impulse of reparation for a misfortune with which he had nothing to do might carry a man.
I began to watch the affair with an interest which even to me seemed queer.

It was not detached, but it was semi-detached, and, of course, on the side for which I seem, in this history, to be perpetually apologizing.