You judged much too quickly.' He rose, a covert amusement playing round his lips.

It was the indulgence of the politician and man of affairs towards the little backwoods girl who was setting him to rights.
'We must have it out,' he said, 'I see I shall have to defend myself.

But now I fear Mrs.Burgoyne will be waiting for me.' And lifting his hat with the somewhat stately and excessive manner, which he could always substitute at the shortest notice for _brusquerie_ or inattention, he went his way.
Lucy Foster was left with a red cheek.

She watched him till he had passed into the shadow of the avenue leading to the house; then with an impetuous movement she took up a book which had been lying beside her on the bench, and began to read it with a peculiar ardour--almost passion.

It was the life of one of the heroes of the Garibaldian expedition of 1860-61.
For of late she had been surrounding herself--by the help of a library in Rome to which the Manistys had access--with the books of the Italian _Risorgimento_, that great movement, that heroic making of a nation, in which our fathers felt so passionate an interest, which has grown so dim and far away now, not only in the mind of a younger England, but even in that of a younger Italy.
But to Lucy--reading the story with the plain of Rome, and St.Peter's in sight, her wits quickened by the perpetual challenge of Manisty's talk with Mrs.Burgoyne, or any chance visitor,--Cavour, Garibaldi, Mazzini; all the striking figures and all the main stages in the great epic; the blind, mad, hopeless outbreaks of '48; the hangings and shootings and bottomless despairs of '49; the sullen calm of those waiting years from '49 to '58; the ecstasy of Magenta and Solferino, and the fierce disappointment of Villafranca; the wild golden days of Sicily in 1860; the plucking of Venice like a ripe fruit in '66; of Rome, in 1870; all the deliriums of freedom, vengeance, union--these immortal names and passions and actions, were thrilling through the girl's fresh poetic sense, and capturing all her sympathies.