I felt I no longer disliked him: it was certainly not his fault that Providence had given him that type of face, and I supposed one could get used to it.
'I was in an evil mood that afternoon,' he went on, and then I knew instinctively that he wanted to efface his satirical words from my memory.

'Things had gone wrong somehow,--for this world of ours is a mighty muddle sometimes.' And here he gave an impatient sigh.

'It is a relief to human nature to vent one's spleen on the first handy person that crosses one's path, and, pardon me for saying so, you were just a little aggressive yourself,' looking at me rather dubiously, as though he were not quite sure how I should take this hit.

My conscience told me that I had been far from peaceable; on the contrary, I had been decidedly cross; not that I would confess that this was the case, so I only returned mildly that I considered that he had been hard on me that day, and had handled my pet theory very roughly.
'Come, now you are talking like a reasonable woman, and I will plead guilty to some severity.

Let me own that I distrusted you, Miss Garston.
I have a horror of gush, and what I call the working mania of young ladies, and you had not proved to me then that you could work.