She saw that without the stimulus of the father's presence, Eustace's interest in politics was less real than his interest in letters, nor did the times seem to her propitious to that philosophic conservatism which might be said to represent the family type of mind.

So she stirred him up to return to some of the projects of his college days when he and she were first bitten with a passion for that great, that fascinating French literature which absorbs, generation after generation, the interests of two-thirds of those who are sensitive to the things of letters.

She suggested a book to him which took his fancy, and in planning it something of the old zest of life returned to him.

Moreover, it was a book which required him to spend a part of every year in Paris, and the neighbourhood of his sister was now more delightful to him than ever.
So, after a time, he settled down contentedly in his London chambers with his books about him, and presently found that glow of labour stealing over him which is at once the stimulus and the reward of every true son of knowledge.

His book reconciled him to life again, and soon he was as often seen in the common haunts of London society as before.