'The doubts are traitors. Send them to execution!' He shook his head. 'Do you remember that sentence we came across yesterday in Chateaubriand's letters "As to my career--I have gone from shipwreck to shipwreck." What if I am merely bound on the same charming voyage?' 'I accept the comparison,' she said with vivacity. 'End as he did in re-creating a church, and regenerating a literature--and see who will count the shipwrecks!' Her hand's disdainful gesture completed the sally. Manisty's face dismissed its shadow. As she stood beside him, in the rosy light--so proudly confident--Eleanor Burgoyne was very delightful to see and hear. Manisty, one of the subtlest and most fastidious of observers, was abundantly conscious of it. Yet she was not beautiful, except in the judgment of a few exceptional people, to whom a certain kind of grace--very rare, and very complex in origin--is of more importance than other things. The eyes were, indeed, beautiful; so was the forehead, and the hair of a soft ashy brown folded and piled round it in a most skilful simplicity. But the rest of the face was too long; and its pallor, the singularly dark circles round the eyes, the great thinness of the temples and cheeks, together with the emaciation of the whole delicate frame, made a rather painful impression on a stranger. It was a face of experience, a face of grief; timid, yet with many strange capacities and suggestions both of vehemence and pride. It could still tremble into youth and delight. But in general it held the world aloof. Mrs. Burgoyne was not very far from thirty, and either physical weakness, or the presence of some enemy within more destructive still, had emphasised the loss of youth. At the same time she had still a voice, a hand, a carriage that lovelier women had often envied, discerning in them those subtleties of race and personality which are not to be rivalled for the asking. To-night she brought all her charm to bear upon her companion's despondency, and succeeded as she had often succeeded before. She divined that he needed flattery, and she gave it; that he must be supported and endorsed, and she had soon pushed General Fenton out of sight behind a cloud of witness of another sort. Manisty's mood yielded; and in a short time he was again no less ready to admire the sunset than she was. 'Heavens!' she said at last, holding out her watch.--'Just look at the time--and Miss Foster!' Manisty struck his hand against the railing. 'How is one to be civil about this visit! Nothing could be more unfortunate. These last critical weeks--and each of us so dependent on the other--Really it is the most monstrous folly on all our parts that we should have brought this girl upon us.' 'Poor Miss Foster!' said Mrs. Burgoyne, raising her eyebrows. 'But of course you won't be civil!--Aunt Pattie and I know that. When I think of what I went through that first fortnight--' 'Eleanor!'