And while Manisty, intoxicated with his own phrases, and fluencies, was alternately smoking and declaiming, Neal with his grey hair, his tall spare form, and his air of old-fashioned punctilium, would sit near, fixing the speaker with his pale-blue eyes,--a little threateningly; always ready to shatter an exuberance, to check an oratorical flow by some quick double-edged word that would make Manisty trip and stammer; showing, too, all the time, by his evident shrinking, by certain impregnable reserves, or by the banter that hid a feeling too keen to show itself, how great is the gulf between a literary and a practical Christianity.
Nevertheless, from the whole wrestle two facts emerged:--the pleasure which these very dissimilar men took in each other's society; and that strange ultimate pliancy of Manisty which lay hidden somewhere under all the surge and froth of his vivacious rhetoric.

Both were equally surprising to Lucy Foster.

How had Manisty ever attached himself to Vanbrugh Neal?
For Neal had a large share of the weaknesses of the student and recluse; the failings, that is to say, of a man who had lived much alone, and found himself driven to an old-maidish care of health and nerves, if a delicate physique was to do its work.

He had fads; and his fads were often unexpected and disconcerting.

One day he would not walk; another day he would not eat; driving was out of the question, and the sun must be avoided like the plague.