"You're such a confoundedly fascinating fellow, with your smiles and your suppressed religion, I don't wonder the girls run after you.

But you are a Jesuit--I never called you a snob--you're giving yourself names to fetch me round to see things your way." It was an outburst, half of admiring affection, half of angry obstinacy, and the elder brother received it without resentment, albeit a little absently.

He was thinking that if Alec held out, "the girls" would not run after him much more.

But then he thought that there was one among them who would not think less, who perhaps might think more of him, for this sacrifice.

He had not made it for her; it might never be his lot to make any sacrifice for her; yet she perhaps would understand this one and applaud it.