Robert vainly endeavored more than once to laugh away her thrilling eulogy.

But she would have none of it.

Her heart was in her words.

He deserved this tribute of praise, unstinted, unmeasured, abundant in its simple truth, yet sounding like a legend spun by some romantic poet, were not the grim evidences of its accuracy visible on every hand.
She was so volubly clear, so precise in fact, so subtle in her clever delineations of humorous or tragic events, that her father was astounded, and even Anstruther silently admitted that a man might live until he equaled the years of a Biblical patriarch without discovering all the resources of a woman.
There were tears in her eyes when she ended; but they were tears of thankful happiness, and Lord Ventnor, a silent listener who missed neither word nor look, felt a deeper chill in his cold heart as he realized that this woman's love could never be his.

The knowledge excited his passion the more.