He was prepared to go as far as she--he didn't see why he should break down first.
Henrietta showed no signs of breaking down.

Her prospects had brightened on her leaving England, and she was now in the full enjoyment of her copious resources.

She had indeed been obliged to sacrifice her hopes with regard to the inner life; the social question, on the Continent, bristled with difficulties even more numerous than those she had encountered in England.

But on the Continent there was the outer life, which was palpable and visible at every turn, and more easily convertible to literary uses than the customs of those opaque islanders.
Out of doors in foreign lands, as she ingeniously remarked, one seemed to see the right side of the tapestry; out of doors in England one seemed to see the wrong side, which gave one no notion of the figure.
The admission costs her historian a pang, but Henrietta, despairing of more occult things, was now paying much attention to the outer life.

She had been studying it for two months at Venice, from which city she sent to the Interviewer a conscientious account of the gondolas, the Piazza, the Bridge of Sighs, the pigeons and the young boatman who chanted Tasso.