"How could you help it ?" After this what could Corinna answer?
She knew Stephen, she told herself, and she knew that she could trust him.

She believed that lie was capable of generous impulses; but she doubted if an impulse, however generous, could sweep away the inherited sentiments which encrusted his outlook on life.

In spite of his youth, he was in reality so old.

He was as old as that indestructible entity, the spirit of race--as that impalpable strain which had existed in every Culpeper, and in all the Culpepers together, from the beginning.

It was not, she realized plainly, such an anachronism as a survival of the aristocratic tradition.