It would be a sickening waste of time.

Nothing now had any attraction for him, nothing seemed to him desirable or important, but that conversation with Lucy Foster which he was bent on securing, and she apparently was bent on refusing him.
His mind was full of the sense of injury.

During all the day before, while he had been making the arrangements for his unhappy sister--during the journeys backward and forward to Rome--a delicious image had filled all the background of his thoughts, the image of the white Lucy, helpless and lovely, lying unconscious in his chair.
In the evening he could hardly command his eagerness sufficiently to help his tired little aunt up the steps of the station, and put her safely in her cab, before hurrying himself up the steep short-cut to the villa.
Should he find her perhaps on the balcony, conscious of his step on the path below, weak and shaken, yet ready to lift those pure, tender eyes of hers to his in a shy gratitude?
He had found no one on the balcony, and the evening of that trying day had been one of baffling disappointment.

Eleanor was in her room, apparently tired out by the adventures of the night before; and although Miss Foster appeared at dinner she had withdrawn immediately afterwards, and there had been no chance for anything but the most perfunctory conversation.
She had said of course all the proper things, so far as they could be said.
'I trust you have been able to make the arrangements you wished.

Mrs.
Burgoyne and I have been so sorry! Poor Miss Manisty must have had a very tiring day--' Bah!--he could not have believed that a girl could speak so formally, so trivially to a man who within twenty-four hours had saved her from the attack of a madwoman.