Do you know her history ?' 'Mr.Brooklyn told me-- 'He doesn't know very much,--shall I tell it you ?' 'If you ought--if Mrs.Burgoyne would like it,' said Lucy, hesitating.
There was a chivalrous feeling in the girl's mind that she was too new an acquaintance, that she had no right to the secrets of this friendship, and Manisty no right to speak of them.
But Manisty took no notice.

With half-shut eyes, like a man looking into the past, he began to describe his cousin; first as a girl in her father's home; then in her married life, silent, unhappy, gentle; afterwards in the dumb years of her irreparable grief; and finally in this last phase of intellectual and spiritual energy, which had been such an amazement to himself, which had first revealed to him indeed the true Eleanor.
He spoke slowly, with a singular and scrupulous choice of words; building up the image of Mrs.Burgoyne's life and mind with an insight and a delicacy which presently held his listener spell-bound.

Several times Lucy felt herself flooded with hot colour.
'Does he guess so much about--about us all ?' she asked herself with a secret excitement.
Suddenly Manisty said, with an entire change of tone, springing to his feet as he did so: 'In short, Miss Foster--my cousin Eleanor is one of the ablest and dearest of women--and she and I have been completely wasting each other's time this winter!' Lucy stared at him in astonishment.
'Shall I tell you why?
We have been too kind to each other!' He waited, studying his companion's face with a hard, whimsical look.
'Eleanor gave my book too much sympathy.

It wanted brutality.

I have worn her out--and my book is in a mess.