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Miss Evans had, indeed, done far more than she ever meant by her one act of thoughtless spite. Poor Allan Gray was terribly smitten with our good friend Ethel; and at the same time, being neither wanting in brains nor fine feeling, he was aware that it was in the highest degree improbable that he would ever make the least impression upon her.
They were so utterly different in ways of life and in ways of thought. She a lady of an old house, he not used to the rank of life in which she had always lived; she a Churchwoman of the highest, he a Dissenter of the lowest; she trained in all field exercises, he a thorough Cockney as ever was bred, considering foxhunting and horseracing sinful. He was perfectly determined never to palter with any one of his principles, but to remain exactly as he was then. He knew, therefore, that he had no hope of Ethel.