Hence she, thinking him still in earnest when he had swerved into florid romance, had been dangerously misled.

He had no conscientious scruples in his love-making, because he was unaccustomed to consider himself as likely to inspire love in women; and Gertrude did not know that her beauty gave to an hour spent alone with her a transient charm which few men of imagination and address could resist.

She, who had lived in the marriage market since she had left school, looked upon love-making as the most serious business of life.

To him it was only a pleasant sort of trifling, enhanced by a dash of sadness in the reflection that it meant so little.
Of the ceremonies attending her departure, the one that cost her most was the kiss she felt bound to offer Agatha.

She had been jealous of her at college, where she had esteemed herself the better bred of the two; but that opinion had hardly consoled her for Agatha's superior quickness of wit, dexterity of hand, audacity, aptness of resource, capacity for forming or following intricate associations of ideas, and consequent power to dazzle others.