He must have known me had he seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps he did not recognize me by my face.

The speaker’s dry, almost comic logic underscores the dehumanizing routine of institutional violence: being “known” not as a person but as a body repeatedly punished. The line pivots on bitter irony—if the flogger truly “knew” him, it was through the habitual act of beating, not through any humane recognition of a face. The final sentence sharpens the critique by implying that physical individuality is irrelevant within such a system; recognition is reduced to the role of victim. Trollope often uses this kind of understated, sardonic narration to expose cruelty and social callousness without overt authorial sermonizing.