half-optimistically

Updated: May 29, 2025

Still, I cannot help fancying that this woman, far more intellectual than passionate, and growing more indifferent, more easy-going, more half-optimistically, half-cynically charitable towards the world with every year that saw her grow fat, and plain, and dowdy, I cannot help fancying that the Countess of Albany must have got to listen to Alfieri's misogallic furies much as she might have listened to his groans had he been afflicted with gout or the toothache, sympathising with the pain, but just a little weary of its expression.

Vernon Lee - The Countess of Albany