He held it out to her. Eleanor took it with uncertain fingers.

'Your mention of him took me by surprise,' she said, after a moment. 'Miss
Foster and I--have been--so long--without hearing of our friends.'

Then she stooped over the letter. It seemed to her the ink was hardly dry
on it--that it was still warm from Manisty's hand. The date of it was only
three days old. And the place from which it came? Cosenza?--Cosenza in
Calabria? Then he was still in Italy?

She put the letter back into Father Benecke's hands.

'Would you read it for me? I have rather a headache to-day.'

He read it with a somewhat embarrassed voice. She lay listening, with her
eyes closed under her large hat, each hand trying to prevent the trembling
of the other.

A strange pride swelled in her. It was a kind and manly letter, expressing
far more personal sympathy with Benecke than Manisty had ever yet allowed
himself--a letter wholly creditable indeed to the writer, and marked with
a free and flowing beauty of phrase that brought home to Eleanor at every
turn his voice, his movements, the ideas and sympathies of the writer.

Towards the end came the familiar Manisty-ism:

'All the same, their answer to you is still as good as ever. The system
must either break up or go on. They naturally prefer that it should go on.
But if it is worked by men like you, it cannot go on. Their instinct never