"What's the difference?"
"The difference between seeing one's way clear, and not seeing it; and the difference between having a hand to take care of one, and not having it."
"Well why do you talk to him so much, if he troubles you?" said Julia, reassured by her sister's smile.
"I must," said Eleanor. "I must see through this business of the bill—at all hazards. I cannot let that go. Mr. Carlisle knows I do not compromise myself."
"Well, I'll tell you what," said Julia getting up to go,—"mamma means you shall go to Rythdale; and she thinks you are going."
With a very earnest kiss to Eleanor, repeated with an emphasis which set the seal upon all the advices and promises of the morning, Julia went off. Eleanor sat a little while thinking; not long; and met Mr. Carlisle the next time he came, with precisely the same sweet self-possession, the unchanged calm cool distance, which drove that gentleman to the last verge of passion and patience. But he was master of himself and bided his time, and talked over the bill as usual.
It was not Eleanor alone who had occasion for the exercise of admiration in these business consultations. Somewhat to his surprise, Mr. Carlisle found that his quondam fair mistress was good for much more than a plaything. With the quick wit of a woman she joined a patience of investigation, an independent strength of judgment, a clearness of rational vision, that fairly met him and obliged him to be the best man he could in the business. He could not get her into a sophistical maze; she found her way through immediately; he could not puzzle her, for what she did not understand one day she had studied out by the next. It is possible that Mr. Carlisle would not have fallen in love with this clear intelligence, if he had known it in the front of Eleanor's qualities; for he was one of those men who do not care for an equal in a wife; but his case was by this time beyond cure. Nay, what might have alienated him once, bound him now; he found himself matched with Eleanor in a game of human life. The more she proved herself his equal, the nobler the conquest, and the more the instinct of victory stirred within him; for pride, a poor sort of pride, began to be stirred as well as love.
So the bill went on; and prisons and laws and reformatory measures and penal enactments and industrial schools, and the question of interfering with the course of labour, and the question of offering a premium upon crime, and a host of questions, were discussed and rediscussed. And partly no doubt from policy, partly from an intelligent view of the subject, but wholly moved thereto by Eleanor, Mr. Carlisle gradually gave back the ground and took just the position (on paper) that she wished to see him take.