pseudo-magnanimity

Updated: May 19, 2025

He believed that Durgin would not fail to make her unhappy, yet he had not done what he might to deliver her out of his hand. He had satisfied a wretched pseudo-magnanimity toward a faithless scoundrel, as he thought Durgin, at the cost of a woman whose anxious hope of his aid had probably forced her mother's hand.

William Dean Howells - The Landlord at Lion's Head — Volume 2