y strung owe to women.
The tenderness, the sympathy, the womanly insight of Ella Risborough had
drawn him out of one of those fits of bitter despondency which are so
apt to beset the scholar just emerging, strained and temporarily
injured, from the first contests of life.

He had done brilliantly at Oxford--more than brilliantly--and he had
paid for overwork by a long break-down. After getting his fellowship he
had been ordered abroad for rest and travel. There was nobody to help
him, nobody to think for him. His father and mother were dead; and of
near relations he had only a brother, established in business at
Liverpool, with whom he had little or nothing in common. At Rome he had
fallen in with the Risboroughs, and had wandered with them during a
whole spring through enchanted land of Sicily, where it gradually became
bearable again to think of the too-many things he knew, and to apply
them to his own pleasure and that of his companions. Ella Risborough was
then forty-two, seventeen years older than himself, and her only
daughter was a child of sixteen. He had loved them all--father, mother,
and child--with the adoring gratitude of one physically and morally
orphaned, to whom a new home and family has been temporarily given. For
Ella and her husband had taken a warm affection to the refined and
modest fellow, and could not do enough for him. His fellowship, and some
small savings, gave him all the money he wanted, but he was starved of
everything else that Man's kindred can generally provide--sympathy, and
understanding without words, and the little gaieties and kindnesses of
every day. These the Risboroughs offered him without stint, and rejoiced
to see him taking hold on life again under the sunshine they made for
him. After six months he was quite restored to health, and he went back
to Oxford to devote himself to his college work.

Twice afterwards he had gone to Rome on short visits to see the
Risboroughs. Then had come the crash of Lady Risborough's sudden death
followed by that of her husband. The bitterness of Sorell's grief was
increased by the fact that he saw no means, at that time, of continuing
his friendship with their orphan child. Indeed his fastidious and
scrupulous temperament forbade him any claim of the kind. He shrank from
being misunderstood. Constance, in the hands of Colonel King and his
wife, was well cared for, and the shrewd and rather suspicious soldier
would certainly have looked askance