Her guardian had come by degrees to let himself be looked after by her a good deal. The inheritor of an old family estate worth some ten thousand pounds a year, Godfrey Lisle had been bred for a country squire, a local man of affairs, or (given aptitude for the wider sphere) a politician; such were the traditions of the Lisles of Hilsey. In him they found no continuance. He was a shy quiet man, tall but rather awkward in person, and near-sighted; his face was handsome and refined and, when he was not embarrassed (he often was), his manner was pleasant, if too soft. But he did not like society, and was shy with strangers; he would fumble with the black ribbon from which his glasses hung, and look the other way, as Judith had described. He was fond of beautiful things--pictures, china, furniture--but had not the energy to make himself a real amateur of any of them. His nature was affectionate--calmly affectionate, and the affections were constant. Once, and once only, he had blazed into a flame of feeling--when he courted Bernadette and in the early days of his marriage with her. The beautiful penniless girl--she would have stirred even a fish to romance; and it would not have been fair to call Godfrey fish-like. But ardours were not really in his line; too soon the rapturous lover subsided into the affectionate husband. Bernadette had shown no signs of noticing the change; perhaps she did not wish to check it. It may be that it coincided with a modification of her own feelings. At any rate, thus acquiesced in, it had gone further. Little of affection survived now, though they treated one another with the considerate politeness of an extinct passion. He gave her everything that she desired--even to the straining of his income; he was the only person for whom she ever "put herself out." Here were reciprocal, if tacit, apologies for a state of affairs which neither of them really regretted. She had loved him, though, once. She did not claim it as a merit; there it was, a curious fact in her past life at which, in her rare moments of introspection, she would smile. She had loved not only all that he brought--ease, wealth, escape from sordidness; she had also loved him for bringing them. Even now sometimes she would love the memory of him as he had seemed in those days; then the considerate politeness would be coloured by a pretty tenderness, a sort of compassionate affection as for a man who had fallen from high estate, inevitably fallen but blamelessly. However these recrudescences on the whole embarrassed Godfrey Lisle, and Bernadette, laughing at herself, withdrew to a safe distance and to her real interests. Godfrey was not one of the interests of her life; he was only one of its conditions.