



Produced by Jonathan Ingram, William Flis, and Distributed Proofreaders







ELEANOR

BY

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD


_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALBERT STERNER_

1900



  TO ITALY THE BELOVED AND BEAUTIFUL,
  INSTRUCTRESS OF OUR PAST,
  DELIGHT OF OUR PRESENT,
  COMRADE OF OUR FUTURE:--
  THE HEART OF AN ENGLISHWOMAN
  OFFERS THIS BOOK.




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


ELEANOR

THE VILLA

LUCY FOSTER

THE BEAUTIFYING OF LUCY

THE LOGGIA

FATHER BENECKE




PART I.


  'I would that you were all to me,
  You that are just so much, no more.
  Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free!
  Where does the fault lie? What the core
  O' the wound, since wound must be?'




CHAPTER I


'Let us be quite clear, Aunt Pattie--when does this young woman arrive?'

'In about half an hour. But really, Edward, you need take no trouble! she
is coming to visit me, and I will see that she doesn't get in your way.
Neither you nor Eleanor need trouble your heads about her.'

Miss Manisty--a small elderly lady in a cap--looked at her nephew with
a mild and deprecating air. The slight tremor of the hands, which were
crossed over the knitting on her lap, betrayed a certain nervousness; but
for all that she had the air of managing a familiar difficulty in familiar
ways.

The gentleman addressed shook his head impatiently.

'One never prepares for these catastrophes till they actually arrive,'
he muttered, taking up a magazine that lay on the table near him, and
restlessly playing with the leaves.

'I warned you yesterday.'

'And I forgot--and was happy. Eleanor--what are we going to do with Miss
Foster?'

A lady, who had been sitting at some little distance, rose and came
forward.

'Well, I should have thought the answer was simple. Here we are fifteen
miles from Rome. The trains might be better--still there are trains. Miss
Foster has never been to Europe before. Either Aunt Pattie's maid or mine
can take her to all the proper things--or there are plenty of people in
Rome--the Westertons--the Borrows?--who at a word from Aunt Pattie would
fly to look after her and take her about. I really don't see that you need
be so miserable!'

Mrs. Burgoyne stood looking down in some amusement at the aunt and nephew.
Edward Manisty, however, was not apparently consoled by her remarks. He
began to pace up and down the salon in a disturbance out of all proportion
to its cause. And as he walked he threw out phrases of ill-humour, so
that at last Miss Manisty, driven to defend herself, put the irresistible
question--

'Then why--why--my dear Edward, did you make me invite her? For it was
really his doing--wasn't it, Eleanor?'

'Yes--I am witness!'

'One of those abominable flashes of conscience that have so much to
answer for!' said Manisty, throwing up his hand in annoyance.--'If she
had come to us in Rome, one could have provided for her. But here in this
solitude--just at the most critical moment of one's work--and it's all
very well--but one can't treat a young lady, when she is actually in one's
house, as if she were the tongs!'

He stood beside the window, with his hands on his sides, moodily looking
out. Thus strongly defined against the sunset light, he would have
impressed himself on a stranger as a man no longer in his first youth,
extraordinarily handsome so far as the head was concerned, but of a
somewhat irregular and stunted figure; stunted, however, only in comparison
with what it had to carry; for in fact he was of about middle height. But
the head, face and shoulders were all remarkably large and powerful; the
colouring--curly black hair, grey eyes, dark complexion--singularly vivid;
and the lines of the brow, the long nose, the energetic mouth, in their
mingled force and perfection, had made the stimulus of many an artist
before now. For Edward Manisty was one of those men of note whose portraits
the world likes to paint: and this 'Olympian head' of his was well known
in many a French and English studio, through a fine drawing of it made
by Legros when Manisty was still a youth at Oxford. 'Begun by David--and
finished by Rembrandt': so a young French painter had once described Edward
Manisty.

The final effect of this discord, however, was an effect of power--of
personality--of something that claimed and held attention. So at least it
was described by Manisty's friends. Manisty's enemies, of whom the world
contained no small number, had other words for it. But women in general
took the more complimentary view.

The two women now in his company were clearly much affected by the
force--wilfulness--extravagance--for one might call it by any of these
names--that breathed from the man before them. Miss Manisty, his aunt,
followed his movements with her small blinking eyes, timidly uneasy, but
yet visibly conscious all the time that she had done nothing that any
reasonable man could rationally complain of; while in the manner towards
him of his widowed cousin Mrs. Burgoyne, in the few words of banter or
remonstrance that she threw him on the subject of his aunt's expected
visitor, there was an indulgence, a deference even, that his irritation
scarcely deserved.

'At least, give me some account of this girl'--he said, breaking in upon
his aunt's explanations. 'I have really not given her a thought--and--good
heavens!--she will be here, you say, in half an hour. Is she
young--stupid--pretty? Has she any experience--any conversation?'

'I read you Adele's letter on Monday,' said Miss Manisty, in a tone of
patience--'and I told you then all I knew--but I noticed you didn't listen.
I only saw her myself for a few hours at Boston. I remember she was
rather good-looking--but very shy, and not a bit like all the other girls
one was seeing. Her clothes were odd, and dowdy, and too old for her
altogether,--which struck me as curious, for the American girls, even the
country ones, have such a natural turn for dressing themselves. Her Boston
cousins didn't like it, and they tried to buy her things--but she was
difficult to manage--and they had to give it up. Still they were very fond
of her, I remember. Only she didn't let them show it much. Her manners
were much stiffer than theirs. They said she was very countrified and
simple--that she had been brought up quite alone by their old uncle, in a
little country town--and hardly ever went away from home.'

'And Edward never saw her?' in