Sentence:  In former days every tavern of repute kept such a room for its own select circle, a club, or society, of habitués, who met every evening, for a pipe and a cheerful glass....Strangers might enter the room, but they were made to feel that they were there on sufferance: they were received with <WSD>distance</WSD> and suspicion. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  A withholding of intimacy; alienation; variance.