She had little or no personal conceit.

Very likely Mr.
Neal's criticisms were altogether just, and she had counselled wrongly.
When she thought of the old days of happy consultation, of that vibrating sympathy of thought which had arisen between them, glorifying the winter days in Rome, of the thousand signs in him of a deep, personal gratitude and affection-- Vanished!--vanished! The soreness of heart she carried about with her, proudly concealed, had the gnawing constancy of physical pain.
While he!--Nothing seemed to her more amazing than the lapses in mere gentlemanliness that Manisty could allow himself.

He was capable on occasion of all that was most refined and tender in feeling.

But once jar that central egotism of his, and he could behave incredibly! Through the small actions and omissions of every day, he could express, if he chose, a hardness of soul before which the woman shuddered.
Did he in truth mean her to understand, not only that she had been an intruder, and an unlucky one, upon his work and his intellectual life, but that any dearer hopes she might have based upon their comradeship were to be once for all abandoned?
She stood there, lost in a sudden tumult of passionate pride and misery, which was crossed every now and then by a strange and bitter wonder.
Each of us carries about with him a certain mental image of himself--typical, characteristic--as we suppose; draped at any rate to our fancy; round which we group the incidents of life.

Eleanor saw herself always as the proud woman; it is a guise in which we are none of us loth to masquerade.