He saw doubt and guilt everywhere, and it was meat and drink to him.

I had often got irritated with this boyish incredulity of his, but on this particular occasion I am bound to say that I thought him so obviously right that I was astounded at Basil's opposing him, however banteringly.
I could swallow a good deal, being naturally of a simple turn, but I could not swallow Lieutenant Keith's autobiography.
"You don't seriously mean, Basil," I said, "that you think that that fellow really did go as a stowaway with Nansen and pretend to be the Mad Mullah and--" "He has one fault," said Basil thoughtfully, "or virtue, as you may happen to regard it.

He tells the truth in too exact and bald a style; he is too veracious." "Oh! if you are going to be paradoxical," said Rupert contemptuously, "be a bit funnier than that.

Say, for instance, that he has lived all his life in one ancestral manor." "No, he's extremely fond of change of scene," replied Basil dispassionately, "and of living in odd places.

That doesn't prevent his chief trait being verbal exactitude.