She, who could play by the hour without note, on most occasions, showed herself, on this, tied and bound to the printed page; and that page must be turned for her by Lucy, and Lucy only.
Meanwhile Manisty sat beside his sister smoking, throwing first the left leg over the right, then the right leg over the left, and making attempts at conversation with her, that Eleanor positively must not see, lest music and decorum both break down in a wreck of nervous laughter.
Alice Manisty scarcely responded; she sat motionless, her wild black head bent like that of a Maenad at watch, her gaze fixed, her long thin hands grasping the arm of her chair with unconscious force.
'What is she thinking of ?' thought Lucy once, with a momentary shiver.
'Herself ?' When bedtime came, Manisty gave the ladies their candles.

As he bade good-night to Lucy, he said in her ear: 'You said you wished to see the Lateran Museum.

My aunt will send Benson with you to-morrow.' His tone did not ask whether she wished for the arrangement, but simply imposed it.
Then, as Eleanor approached him, he raised his shoulders with a gesture that only she saw, and led her a few steps apart in the dimly lighted ante-room, where the candles were placed.
'She wants the most impossible things, my dear lady,' he said in low-voiced despair--'things I can no more do than fly over the moon!' 'Edward!'-- said his sister from the open door of the salon--'I should like some further conversation with you before I go to bed.' Manisty with the worst grace in the world saw his aunt and Eleanor to their rooms, and then went back to surrender himself to Alice.

He was a man who took family relations hardly, impatient of the slightest bond that was not of his own choosing.

Yet it was Eleanor's judgment that, considering his temperament, he had not been a bad brother to this wild sister.