Mrs. Burgoyne stood looking down in some amusement at the aunt and nephew.
Edward Manisty, however, was not apparently consoled by her remarks. He
began to pace up and down the salon in a disturbance out of all proportion
to its cause. And as he walked he threw out phrases of ill-humour, so
that at last Miss Manisty, driven to defend herself, put the irresistible
question--

'Then why--why--my dear Edward, did you make me invite her? For it was
really his doing--wasn't it, Eleanor?'

'Yes--I am witness!'

'One of those abominable flashes of conscience that have so much to
answer for!' said Manisty, throwing up his hand in annoyance.--'If she
had come to us in Rome, one could have provided for her. But here in this
solitude--just at the most critical moment of one's work--and it's all
very well--but one can't treat a young lady, when she is actually in one's
house, as if she were the tongs!'

He stood beside the window, with his hands on his sides, moodily looking
out. Thus strongly defined against the sunset light, he would have
impressed himself on a stranger as a man no longer in his first youth,
extraordinarily handsome so far as the head was concerned, but of a
somewhat irregular and stunted figure; stunted, however, only in comparison
with what it had to carry; for in fact he was of about middle height. But
the head, face and shoulders were all remarkably large and powerful; the
colouring--curly black hair, grey eyes, dark complexion--singularly vivid;
and the lines of the brow, the long nose, the energetic mouth, in their
mingled force and perfection, had made the stimulus of many an artist
before now. For Edward Manisty was one of those men of note whose portraits