After a time he kept up, mainly on her account, a regular intercourse with the brother, who was becoming rather prosy, as was Wentworth himself.

Presently the brother married, and the sister ceased to live with him.
Wentworth's visits to Oxford gradually ceased to give him pleasure.

He found his friend's wife middle-class, self-absorbed, and artificial, the friend himself donnish, cut and dried, and liable to anecdotic seizures of increasing frequency.

The intimacy dwindled and was now moribund.

But it never entered his mind to enquire into the whereabouts of the sister, and to continue his acquaintance with her independently.