Then she looked up with a smile.

It was amusing to be taken care of by this tall stranger! 'It is most unfeminine, I am afraid,' she said, but I couldn't be tired if I tried.' Elsmere grasped her hand.
'You make me feel myself more than ever a shocking-example,' he said, letting it go with a little sigh.

The smart of his own renunciation was still keen in him.

She lingered a moment, could find nothing to say, threw him a look all shy sympathy and lovely pity, and was gone.
In the evening Robert got an explanation of that sudden stiffening in his auditor of the afternoon, which had perplexed him.

He and the vicar were sitting smoking in the study after dinner, and the ingenious young man managed to shift the conversation on to the Leyburns, as he had managed to shift it once or twice before that day, flattering himself, of course, on each occasion that his manoeuvres were beyond detection.
The vicar, good soul, by virtue of his original discovery, detected them all, and with a sense of appropriation in the matter, not at all unmixed with a sense of triumph over Mrs.T., kept the ball rolling merrily.
'Miss Leyburn seems to have very strong religious views,' said Robert, _a propos_ of some remark of the vicar's as to the assistance she was to him in the school.
'Ah, she is her father's daughter,' said the vicar, genially.