Even his back, his homespun Norfolk jacket, his loose knickerbockers, his stalwart calves expressed disapproval; but when his father spoke again he realised that he had moved away like that, and obscured his face for a different reason.
"Have you noticed anything else about your mother ?" he asked.
That made Michael understand.
"Yes, father," he said.

"I daresay I am wrong about it--" "Naturally I may not agree with you; but I should like to know what it is." "She's afraid of you," said Michael.
Lord Ashbridge continued looking out of the window a little longer, letting his eyes dwell on his own garden and his own fields, where towered the leafless elms and the red roofs of the little town which had given him his own name, and continued to give him so satisfactory an income.

There presented itself to his mind his own picture, painted and framed and glazed and hung up by himself, the beneficent nobleman, the conscientious landlord, the essential vertebra of England's backbone.

It was really impossible to impute blame to such a fine fellow.

He turned round into the room again, braced and refreshed, and saw Michael thus.
"It is quite true what you say," he said, with a certain pride in his own impartiality.