But neither Miss Louisa Smith, with her bun and sandwich ancestry, nor the eighth Lord Breakwater's young and lovely sister, though both willing to undertake the situation, were either of them finally offered it.

Charles remained free as air, and a dreadful stigma gradually attached to him as a heartless flirt and a perverter of young girls' minds from men of more solid worth.

A man who pleases easily and is hard to please soon gets a bad name among--mothers.

I don't think Lady Hope-Acton thought very kindly of him, as she sped up to Scotland in the night mail.
Perhaps he was not so much to blame as she thought.

Long ago, ten long years ago, in the reckless days of which Lady Mary had then made so much, and now made so little, poor Charles had been deeply in love with a good woman, a gentle, quiet girl, who after a time had married his brother Ralph.