The views he let me have of himself were like those glimpses through the shifting rents in a thick fog—bits of vivid and vanishing detail, giving no connected idea of the general aspect of a country. They fed one’s curiosity without satisfying it; they were no good for purposes of orientation. Upon the whole he was misleading.
Rents: literary term for "tears" or "openings". It's a metaphorical expression that evokes the idea of small, fleeting gaps or fissures in the fog.
