Eleanor | Page 6

honestly say that her dress had cost her much thought then or at any other time. She had been content to be very simple, to admire other girls' cleverness. There had been influences upon her own childhood, however, that had somehow separated her from the girls around her, had made it difficult for her to think and plan as they did.
She rose with the dress in her hands, and as she did so, she caught the glory of the sunset through the open window.
She ran to look, all her senses flooded with the sudden beauty,--when she heard a man's voice as it seemed close beside her. Looking to the left, she distinguished a balcony, and a dark figure that had just emerged upon it.
Mr. Manisty--no doubt! She closed her window hurriedly, and began her dressing, trying at the time to collect her thoughts on the subject of these people whom she had come to visit.
Yet neither the talk of her Boston cousins, nor the gossip of the Lewinsons at Florence had left any very clear impression. She remembered well her first and only sight of Miss Manisty at Boston. The little spinster, so much a lady, so kind, cheerful and agreeable, had left a very favourable impression in America. Mr. Manisty had left an impression too--that was certain--for people talked of him perpetually. Not many persons, however, had liked him, it seemed. She could remember, as it were, a whole track of resentments, hostilities, left behind. 'He cares nothing about us'--an irate Boston lady had said in her hearing--but he will exploit us! He despises us,--but he'll make plenty of speeches and articles out of us--you'll see!'
As for Major Lewinson, the husband of Mr. Manisty's first cousin,--she had been conscious all the time of only half believing what he said, of holding out against it. He must be so different from Mr. Manisty--the little smart, quick-tempered soldier--with his contempt for the undisciplined civilian way of doing things. She did not mean to remember his remarks. For after all, she had her own ideas of what Mr. Manisty would be like. She had secretly formed her own opinion. He had been a man of letters and a traveller before he entered politics. She remembered--nay, she would never forget--a volume of letters from Palestine, written by him, which had reached her through the free library of the little town near her home. She who read slowly, but, when she admired, with a silent and worshipping ardour, had read this book, had hidden it under her pillow, had been haunted for days by its pliant sonorous sentences, by the colour, the perfume, the melancholy of pages that seemed to her dreaming youth marvellous, inimitable. There were descriptions of a dawn at Bethlehem--a night wandering at Jerusalem--a reverie by the sea of Galilee--the very thought of which made her shiver a little, so deeply had they touched her young and pure imagination.
And then--people talked so angrily of his quarrel with the Government--and his resigning. They said he had been foolish, arrogant, unwise. Perhaps. But after all it had been to his own hurt--it must have been for principle. So far the girl's secret instinct was all on his side.
Meanwhile, as she dressed, there floated through her mind fragments of what she had been told as to his strange personal beauty; but these she only entertained shyly and in passing. She had been brought up to think little of such matters, or rather to avoid thinking of them.
She went through her toilette as neatly and rapidly as she could, her mind all the time so full of speculation and a deep restrained excitement that she ceased to trouble herself in the least about her gown, As for her hair, she arranged it almost mechanically, caring only that its black masses should be smooth and in order. She fastened at her throat a small turquoise brooch that had been her mother's; she clasped the two little chain bracelets that were the only ornaments of the kind she possessed, and then without a single backward look towards the reflection in the glass, she left her room--her heart beating fast with timidity and expectation.
* * * * *
'Oh! poor child--poor child!--what a frock!'
Such was the inward ejaculation of Mrs. Burgoyne, as the door of the salon was thrown open by the Italian butler, and a very tall girl came abruptly through, edging to one side as though she were trying to escape the servant, and looking anxiously round the vast room.
Manisty also turned as the door opened. Miss Manisty caught his momentary expression of wonder, as she herself hurried forward to meet the new-comer.
'You have been very quick, my dear, and I am sure you must be hungry.--This is an old friend of ours--Mrs. Burgoyne--my nephew--Edward Manisty. He