The weirdness of her look as she tells these things! But she expresses herself often with an extraordinary poetry.

I envy her the words, and the phrases!--It seemed to me once or twice, that she had all sorts of things I wished to have.

If one could only be a little mad--one might write good books!' He turned upon his companion, with a wild brilliance in his own blue eyes, that, taken together with the subject of their conversation and his many points of physical likeness to his sister, sent an uncomfortable thrill through Eleanor.

Nevertheless, as she knew well, at the very bottom of Manisty's being, there lay a remarkable fund of ordinary capacity, an invincible sanity in short, which had always so far rescued him in the long run from that element which was extravagance in him, and madness in his sister.
And certainly nothing could have been more reasonable, strong and kind, than his further talk about his sister.

He confided to his cousin that his whole opinion of Alice's state had changed; that certain symptoms for which he had been warned to be on the watch had in his judgment appeared; that he had accordingly written to a specialist in Rome, asking him to come and see Alice, without warning, on the following day; and that he hoped to be able to persuade her without too much conflict to accept medical watching and treatment for a time.
'I feel that it is plotting against her,' he said, not without feeling, 'but it has gone too far--she is not safe for herself or others.