to suffer now. It made her laugh to think of his languid reception of her,
the moods, the silences, the weeks of just civil acquaintanceship; and then
gradually, the snatches of talk--and those great black brows of his lifted
in a surprise which a tardy politeness would try to mask:--and at last,
the good, long, brain-filling, heart-filling talks, the break-down of
reserves--the man's whole mind, its remorses, ambitions, misgivings, poured
at her feet--ending in the growth of that sweet daily habit of common
work--side by side, head close to head--hand close to hand.--

Eleanor Burgoyne lay still and motionless in the soft dusk of the old room,
her white lids shut--Lucy Foster thought her asleep.--

He had said to her once, quoting some Frenchman, that she was 'good to
consult about ideas.' Ah well!--at a great price had she won that praise.
And with an unconscious stiffening of the frail hands lying on the arms
of the chair, she thought of those bygone hours in which she had asked
herself--'what remains?' Religious faith?--No!--Life was too horrible!
Could such things have happened to her in a world ruled by a God?--that was
her question, day and night for years. But books, facts, ideas--all the
riddle of this various nature--_that_ one might still amuse oneself with a
little, till one's own light went out in the same darkness that had already
engulfed mother--husband--child.

So that 'cleverness,' of which father and husband had taken so little
account, which had been of so little profit to her so far in her course
through circumstance, had come to her aid. The names and lists of the
books that had passed through her hands, during those silent years of her
widowhood, lived beside her stern old father, would astonish even Manisty
were she to try and give some account of them. And first she had read
merely to fill the hours, to dull memory. But gradually there had sprung up