muffishness

— There was only one symptom of his old muffishness left about him. He had clung to that old valetudianarian self-considering creed, which he had got, after all, from his mother, as long as he could; but he had been driven from point to point of it—first by Laura Seckerton (now Lady Poyntz), and secondly by Lady Jane Portobello, his present bride—until he had hardly any of it left.