Isabel had grown fond of his ugliness; his awkwardness had become dear to her.

They had been sweetened by association; they struck her as the very terms on which it had been given him to be charming.

He was so charming that her sense of his being ill had hitherto had a sort of comfort in it; the state of his health had seemed not a limitation, but a kind of intellectual advantage; it absolved him from all professional and official emotions and left him the luxury of being exclusively personal.

The personality so resulting was delightful; he had remained proof against the staleness of disease; he had had to consent to be deplorably ill, yet had somehow escaped being formally sick.

Such had been the girl's impression of her cousin; and when she had pitied him it was only on reflection.