That all was sincere he could have no doubt.

Gradually he lost his critical attitude, and at moments surprised himself under the influence of a sympathetic instinct.

Then he would lose consciousness of her words for an interval, during which he pondered her face, and was wrought upon by its strange beauty.

The pure and touching spirituality of Maud's countenance had never been so present to him as now; she was pale with very earnestness, her eyes seemed larger than their wont, there was more than womanly sweetness in the voice which so unconsciously modulated itself to the perfect expression of all she uttered.

Towards the end, he could but yield himself completely to the spell, and, when she ceased, he, like Adam at the end of the angel's speech, did not at once perceive that her voice was silent.
"It was long," she said, after telling the outward circumstances of her life with her aunt, "before I came to understand how differently I had been brought up from other children.