exchanged looks, and laughed together. - George Gissing

The truth was that nature had endowed them with a larger share of brains than was common in their circle, and had added that touch of pride which harmonised so ill with the restrictions of poverty. Their life had a tone of melancholy, the painful reserve which characterises a certain clearly-defined class in the present day.

To flatter the proletariat is to fight against all the good that still characterises educated England — against reverence for the beautiful, against magnanimity, against enthusiasm of mind, heart, and soul.

"I see. I imagined that he was cast out of all decent society".
"If society were really decent, he would have been"