She felt she had not satisfied him.
* * * * * But before long by the mere natural force of her personality, she seemed to be the leading spirit in the sick-room.

Only she could lead or influence the Squire, whose state of sullen despair terrified the household.

The nurses and doctors depended on her for all those lesser aids that intelligence and love can bring to hospital service.

The servants of the house would have worked all night and all day for her and Mr.Desmond.Yet all this was scarcely seen--it was only felt--'a life, a presence like the air.' Most of us have known the same experience--how, when human beings come to the testing, the values of a house change, and how men and women, who have been in it as those who serve, become naturally and noiselessly its rulers, and those who once ruled, their dependents.
It was so at Mannering.

A tender, unconscious sovereignty established itself; and both the weak and the strong grouped themselves round it.
Especially did Elizabeth seem to understand the tragic fact that as death drew nearer the boy struggled more painfully to live, that he might know what was happening on the battlefield.