Her nature dreaded rebuffs; and her father had no words sharp enough for any feminine ambition beyond the household and the nursery.
So she had kept it all to herself, till Miss Manisty, shocked as many other people had begun to be by her fragile looks, had bearded the General, and carried her off to Rome for the winter.

And there she had been forced, as it were, into this daily contact with Edward Manisty, at what might well turn out to be the most critical moment of his life; when he was divided between fierce regrets for the immediate past, and fierce resolves to recover and assert himself in other ways; when he was taking up again his earlier function of man of letters in order to vindicate himself as a politician and a man of action.

Strange and challenging personality!--did she yet know it fully?
Ah! that winter--what a healing in it all!--what a great human experience! Yet now, as always, when her thoughts turned to the past, she did not allow them to dwell upon it long.

That past lay for her in a golden haze.

To explore it too deeply, or too long,--that she shrank from.