It was her mother who had produced upon his own early maturity one of those critical impressions, for good or evil, which men so sensitive and finely strung owe to women.
The tenderness, the sympathy, the womanly insight of Ella Risborough had drawn him out of one of those fits of bitter despondency which are so apt to beset the scholar just emerging, strained and temporarily injured, from the first contests of life.
He had done brilliantly at Oxford--more than brilliantly--and he had paid for overwork by a long break-down.

After getting his fellowship he had been ordered abroad for rest and travel.

There was nobody to help him, nobody to think for him.

His father and mother were dead; and of near relations he had only a brother, established in business at Liverpool, with whom he had little or nothing in common.

At Rome he had fallen in with the Risboroughs, and had wandered with them during a whole spring through enchanted land of Sicily, where it gradually became bearable again to think of the too-many things he knew, and to apply them to his own pleasure and that of his companions.