He had once been too scrupulous in not wounding vanity; he was now too indifferent to it.

But if sometimes this unamiable trait of character, as displayed to others, chilled or startled Evelyn, the contrast of his manner towards herself was a flattery too delicious not to efface all other recollections.

To her ear his voice always softened its tone; to her capacity of mind ever bent as by sympathy, not condescension; to her--the young, the timid, the half-informed--to her alone he did not disdain to exhibit all the stores of his knowledge, all the best and brightest colours of his mind.

She modestly wondered at so strange a preference.

Perhaps a sudden and blunt compliment which Maltravers once addressed to her may explain it.