His comparative youth spoke of waste even as her positive--her too positive--spoke of economy.

There was only one thing, that is, to make up in him for everything he had lost, though it was distinct enough indeed that this thing might sometimes serve.

It consisted in the perfection of an indifference, an indifference at the present moment directed to the plea--a plea of inability, of pure destitution--with which his sister had met him.

Yet it had even now a wider embrace, took in quite sufficiently all consequences of queerness, confessed in advance to the false note that, in such a setting, he almost excruciatingly constituted.

He cared as little that he looked at moments all his impudence as that he looked all his shabbiness, all his cleverness, all his history.