Little sneers like this at England, sarcasms on English prudery, English reserve, or English distrustfulness, were constantly dropping from her, and I grew up to believe that while genuine sentiment and unselfish devotion lived on one side of the Channel, a decorous hypocrisy had its home on the other.
"That Boy Of Norcott's"
Charles James Lever
If anyone had told Audrey that for the first time in her life she had all the symptoms that belong to a certain well-known disease-that these cold and hot fits, this self-distrustfulness and new timidity that were transforming her into a different Audrey, were only its salient features-she would have scouted the idea very fiercely.
"Lover or Friend"
Rosa Nouchette Carey
And now these were wasted gifts, morbid qualities, now it was all useless and sick and had become more sick and more useless as the sick years of shadow drearily dragged on their misty-melancholy introspection and increasing distrustfulness.
"Dr. Adriaan"
Louis Couperus