At first, indeed, he greeted Constance kindly or even affectionately.

She had been in a terrible state of anxiety as to the attitude he would assume towards her, and this mental strain affected prejudicially her very delicate bodily condition.

His kindness, of an ordinary enough nature indeed, seemed to her yearning heart a miracle of condescending love, and she was transported with the idea that his affection to her, once so sincere, was indeed returning.

But I grieve to say that his manner thawed only for a very short time, and ere long he relapsed into an attitude of complete indifference.

It was as if his real, true, honest, and loving character had made one more vigorous effort to assert itself,--as though it had for a moment broken through the hard and selfish crust that was forming around him; but the blighting influence which was at work proved seemingly too strong for him to struggle against, and riveted its chains again upon him with a weight heavier than before.
That there was some malefic influence, mental or physical, thus working on him, no one who had known him before could for a moment doubt.