As to Madame," said Miss Ellen, in conclusion, "she was quite right, my dear, to contrast your negligence with Lucy's industry, and your smart speech was not in good taste towards her, because you know that she knows nothing of drawing, and could not dispute the point with you.

There she comes," added Miss Ellen rather nervously.

She was afraid of Madame.
"I'll go and beg her pardon, dear Miss Ellen," said Eleanor penitently, and rushing out of the room, she met Madame in the passage, and we heard her pouring forth a torrent of apology and self-accusation in a style peculiar to herself.

If in her youth and cleverness she was at times a little sharp-tongued and self-opinionated, the vehemence of her self-reproaches when she saw herself in fault was always a joke with those who knew her.
"Eleanor's confessions are only to be matched by her favourite Jeremy Taylor's," said Jack one day.
"She's just as bumptious next time, all the same," said Clement.

He had been disputing with Eleanor, and the generous grace of meeting an apology half-way was no part of his character.
He had an arbitrary disposition, in which Eleanor to some extent shared.
He controlled it to fairness in discussions with men, but with men only.
With Eleanor, who persisted in thinking for herself, and was not slow to express her thoughts, he had many hot disputes, in which he often seemed unable to be fair, and did not always trouble himself to be reasonable.
By his own account he "detested girls with opinions." Abroad he was politely contemptuous of feminine ideas; at home he was apt to be rudely so.
But this was only one, and a later development of many-sided Clement.
And the subject is a digression, and has no business here..