Mock he most certainly did; but his mockery was all aimed to strike himself on the recoil--himself and the sentiments which had sprung to being in his soul, and to which--nameless as he was, pledged as he was to a task that would most likely involve his ruin--he conceived that he had no right.
He gave expression to his feelings, yet chose for them the expression best calculated to render them barren of all consequence where Mistress Winthrop was concerned.

Where another would have hidden those emotions, Mr.Caryll elected to flaunt them half-derisively, that Hortensia might trample them under foot in sheer disgust.
It was, perhaps, the knowledge that did he wait, and come to her as an honest, devout lover, he must in honesty tell her all there was to know of his odd history and of his bastardy, and thus set up between them a barrier insurmountable.

Better, he may have thought, to make from the outset a mockery of a passion for which there could be no hope.

And so, under that mocking, impertinent exterior, I hope you catch some glimpse of the real, suffering man--the man who boasted that he had the gift of laughter.
He continued a while to pace the dewy lawn after she had left him, and a deep despondency descended upon the spirit of this man who accounted seriousness a folly.

Hitherto his rancor against his father had been a theoretical rancor, a thing educated into him by Everard, and accepted by him as we accept a proposition in Euclid that is proved to us.