Crossword-Solution: GRUFFNESS 9 letters, 2 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 16

Tree was seated, some half-dozen young men hovering uneasily in her neighbourhood, all his audacity was suddenly stricken from him; his gruffness, his overbearing insolence vanished with an abruptness that left him cold.

His gruffness was little more than a protection which he wore to hide a complete disillusionment; and to Philip it seemed tragic to see him just waiting for death, not impatiently, but rather with loathing for it, hating old age and unable to resign himself to its limitations, and yet with the feeling that death was the only solution of the bitterness of his life.

With a gruffness as if the evening mist had got into his throat he said: "Let's take another bench." "Why?" objected she.

Then she turned again to the surly host with a smile that must have caused him to regret his gruffness.

The eyes that met mine were sad, but not reproachful; that she had been crying bitterly, I could tell by the redness of her eyelids, but her manner was unchanged from its old gruffness.