As a suitor for one of her own girls he would, of course, have been impossible; but her girls she placed in a different category from Althea; they had the rights of youth, charm, and beauty.
The girls, for their part, though seeing Franklin as a fair object for chaff, conceived of him as wholly suitable.

Though they chaffed him, they never did so to his disadvantage, and they were respectful spectators of his enterprise.

They had the nicest sense of loyalty for serious situations.
And Miss Buckston was of all the most satisfactory in her attitude.

Her contempt for the disillusions and impediments of marriage could not prevent her from feeling an altogether new regard for a person to whom marriage was so obviously open; moreover, she thought Mr.Kane highly interesting.

She at once informed Althea that she always found American men vastly the superior in achievement and energy to the much-vaunted American woman, and Althea was not displeased.