I am tired of sitting.' And they would pace up and down the terrace and the olive-garden beyond, while Mrs.Burgoyne leant upon Lucy's arm, chatting and laughing with an evident relief from tension which only betrayed the mental and physical fatigue behind.
Lucy wondered to see how exquisite, how dainty, she would emerge from these wrestles with hard work.

Her fresh white or pale dresses, the few jewels half-hidden at her wrists or throat, the curled or piled masses of the fair hair, were never less than perfection, it seemed to Lucy; she was never more the woman of fashion and the great world than when she came out from a morning's toil that would have left its disturbing mark on a strong man, her eyes shining under the stress and ardour of those 'ideas,' as to which it was good to talk with her.
But how eagerly she would throw off that stress, and turn to wooing and winning Lucy Foster! All hanging back in the matter was gone.

Certain vague thoughts and terrors were laid to sleep, and she must needs allow herself the luxury of charming the quiet girl, like all the rest--the dogs, the servants or the village children.

There was a perpetual hunger for love in Eleanor's nature which expressed itself in a thousand small and piteous ways.

She could never help throwing out tendrils, and it was rarely that she ventured them in vain.
In the case of Lucy Foster, however, her fine tact soon discovered that caresses were best left alone.