Sentence: Youth and beauty in suffering, danger, or humiliation, form naturally an object of interest and compassion but Walter, though pleased by the conviction that he had done a good action, and one so fully involving the gratitude of Lilian Napier and her haughty relative, felt a dread of what was to ensue, weighing heavily on his mind for the Scottish privy council was then composed of men with whom the proudest noble dared not to trifle, and before whom the pride and power of the great Argyle, lord of a vast territory, and chief of the most powerful of the western clans, bent like a reed beneath the storm.
Combination: a reed beneath the storm (root: reed, modifier: storm)
Property: submissive
Property type: emergent