How was it she had liked his Palestine book so much?
He almost felt as though in some mysterious way he had been talking to her, and she listening, for years,--since first, perhaps, her sweet crude youth began.
Then even his egotism felt the prick of humour.

Five weeks had she been with them at the villa ?--and in a fortnight their party was to break up.

How profitably indeed he had used his time with her! How civil--how kind--how discerning he had shown himself! Yet soreness of this kind was soon lost in the surge of this new and unexpected impulse, which brought his youth exultantly back upon him.
A beautiful woman rode beside him, through the Italian evening.

With impatience, with an inward and passionate repudiation of all other bonds and claims, he threw himself into that mingled process--at once exploring and revealing--which makes the thrill of all the higher relations between men and women, and ends invariably either in love--or tragedy.
* * * * * They found a carriage waiting for them near the Sforza-Cesarini gate, and in it Mrs.Elliott, Reggie Brooklyn's kind sister.

Lucy was taken to a doctor, and the hurt was dressed.