Chapter XIII: Part 13

"I never heard any woman laugh better than Eugenia," he thought. "Most women laugh so atrociously, that I wish it was made penal, but she laughs charmingly."

Then he wondered why of late he had so seldom heard that sweet, soft, bright sound. "She can't be dull," he said to himself, "we have had a fair amount of variety since we came here. Besides, catch a woman being dull and not complaining of it! And if there is anything she wants, she would have been sure to ask for it."

He firmly believed himself the most indulgent of husbands, and so, in a certain practical sense, perhaps he was. He "grudged her nothing," though, indeed, her tastes continued so simple, that her own allowance from her father promised more than to cover her whole personal expenses; he never went away from home without bringing her some costly present when he came back--the first time, it had been a bracelet of great value. Eugenia had thanked him for it warmly, but then, eyeing it with some misgiving, had said something about its being too good for her.

"I don't feel as if I liked wearing such splendid things, Beauchamp," had been her words. "It hardly seems consistent with--"

"With what?" he had asked, irritated already.

"With my former quiet life, with present things, even, my sister being the wife of a poor curate, for one thing. But oh, don't be vexed, Beauchamp, I am very silly, I know. Forgive me. For the _thought_ of me, the wish to please me, I cannot thank you enough. That would have delighted me had the bracelet been the plainest in the world."

Upon which, Beauchamp had turned from her angrily, with some muttered words about "sentimental nonsense and affectation," and Eugenia had had a sore fit of penitence for the inexcusable ingratitude which had thus wounded his sensitive spirit. And, after all, she did deserve some blame for unnecessarily irritating him in this instance.

And thus, whether really the case or not, it always seemed to him in any of the discussions or disagreements which still, notwithstanding Eugenia's scrupulous care, occasionally arose between them. And no wonder that he thought so. It was always the same story. Eugenia annoyed him, probably in some very trivial matter, as to which, nevertheless, he felt bound to act up to his principle of "keeping a tight hand on her, letting her feel the reins."

And invariably it ended in her taking all the blame on herself, exerting all her powers of logic (or sophistry) to convince herself that the fault lay with her alone. It was but rarely, very, very rarely, that she allowed her strong true sense of justice, of self-respect and womanly right, to break out from the restraint in which she had condemned it to dwell. And on such occasions, according to the invariable law of reaction, the unnatural repression avenged itself, and as had been the case in the carriage the night they came to Halswood, Eugenia's bitterness of indignation and fiery temper horrified herself, and did her infinite injustice with her husband. It was a bad state of things altogether--bad for Eugenia, worse, perhaps, for her husband, fostering his selfishness, increasing his narrow-minded self-opinionativeness.

The day after the one on which it had occurred to Beauchamp that Eugenia's spirits were not what they had been, it happened that she got a letter from Sydney. It came in the morning, and as Captain Chancellor handed it to her, a joyful exclamation escaped her.

"From Sydney! Oh, I am so glad! I have not heard from her for such a time."

"What do you call `such a time,' I wonder?" said Captain Chancellor, good-humouredly. "A week, I suppose?"

"No, longer than that," replied Eugenia. And then, encouraged by his tone, she added, "You know Sydney and I had hardly ever been separated before, and lately I have been particularly anxious to hear from home-- from Wareborough--on account of my father not having been well."

"Your father ill! I never heard of it. I wonder you did not tell me," said her husband.

"It was when you were away--the week before last--I heard it. I think I mentioned it when I wrote," said Eugenia, timidly, reluctant to own to herself that Beauchamp could so soon have forgotten a matter of such interest to her.

"Ah, well, perhaps you did. It is nothing serious, I suppose?" And without waiting for an answer, Captain Chancellor proceeded to read his own letters.

One among them was from an old brother officer, a friend of several years' standing, recently returned from abroad, whom he had invited to come down for a few days' shooting, intending to arrange a suitable party to meet him.

"Eugenia," he said, looking up quickly, after reading this letter, "Colonel Masterton cannot come till the 29th. That leaves us all the week after next free. Of course I shall not ask the others till he comes. How would you like to have your people for a few days then--the Thurstons and your father. The change might do him good, and you seem dying to see your sister."

Eugenia's face glowed all over with delight. The old bright look came into her eyes, the old eager ring thrilled again through her voice.

"Oh, Beauchamp, thank you, thank you so much for thinking of it. It would be delightful. I cannot tell you how I should enjoy it."

"Why have you never spoken of it before if you wish it so much?" asked Beauchamp, not unkindly, but with the slight irritation of incipient self-reproach. "I can't _guess_ your wishes always, you know."

"I did mention it once," she said, timidly again. "Don't you remember, the first time you had to go away I asked if Sydney might come to me."

"But that was an absurd proposal. It would have looked so ridiculous to bring Mrs Thurston all the way here because I was to be away, and naturally when your friends do come I should wish to be at home to receive them; so you had better write about their coming, to-day."

He rose as he spoke, and gathering his letters and newspapers together, left the room, feeling very well pleased with himself, and not sorry to see the bright flush of happiness his proposal had brought to his wife's pale cheeks.

She was indeed feeling very happy. Never since her marriage, since at least the first few days of unalloyed enjoyment in Paris--had she felt so eagerly delighted about anything. And the bright gleam had not come before it was wanted. Notwithstanding Beauchamp's comfortable belief that they had had a fair amount of variety since coming to Halswood, Eugenia's life had latterly been very dull. The most pleasurable part of the variety had fallen to his own share--two or three "runs up to town" to see about the new furniture, or new carriages, or something of the kind; one or two short visits to bachelor shooting-boxes, to which ladies were not invited; plenty of the exhilarating out-door life, which he thoroughly enjoyed, to which as yet Eugenia, not over strong, and completely unaccustomed to horses, was not sufficiently acclimatised to find it enjoyable. No wonder Captain Chancellor considered that the last three months had been far from dull. They would not have seemed so to Eugenia, had her inner life been a more natural and healthy one; but as it was, the outside distractions that had come in her way had been few and by no means powerful.

Most of the "families of position" in the neighbourhood had called on them, but the very biggest people of all--a family residing at a considerable distance from Halswood--had not yet done so; and Beauchamp's evident anxiety on this point had not been unobserved by Eugenia, though resolutely put aside by her as one of the things into which she would not look. Some of their neighbours had already invited them to dinner, and they had gone; but Eugenia had not enjoyed the experience, and felt little wish to renew it. "Long ago," as now in her own mind she had learnt to call her girlhood, even the dullest of dinner-parties would have furnished her quick observation, her lively imagination, her fresh, eager nature with material for interest and entertainment. But now-a-days it was different. She was self-conscious and self-absorbed, and, as a matter of course, less attractive in herself, less ready to find others so. Her one engrossing sensation in company was anxiety to please, or at least to avoid displeasing her husband, which left her none of the leisure of mind or self-forgetfulness essential to her enjoyment of the people or scenes about her. And these had not been sufficiently striking or interesting to force her out of herself. There were not many young people in the neighbourhood; those of her own sex nearest in age to Eugenia happening at this time to be either young girls not yet out of the schoolroom, or youthful matrons, with whom Mrs Chancellor could not feel that she had much in common. They all seemed happy and busy, perfectly at ease, satisfied with their lives and themselves. "Or else," thought Eugenia, "they are more clever at hiding their anxieties and disappointments than I am." In many cases doubtless true. She had not yet learnt, as most women of deep feeling sooner or later must learn, to smile when the heart feels all but breaking, to force interest in the trivialities around one, when one's own life, or what may be dearer than life, seems hanging in the balance. At this stage of her history, such seeming she would probably have stigmatised as mere hypocrisy, not taking into account that unselfishness and worthy self-respect, as often as pride, furnish the motive for the wearing of that most tragic "des masques tragiques--celui qui avait un sourire."

So, though her beauty and gentleness prepossessed many in her favour-- many even of those whose prejudices as well as curiosity had been aroused by the fact that the wife of the new master of Halswood was not exactly of their world, belonging, indeed, to one of "those dreadful manufacturing places, where the sun never shines for the smoke, and all the people drop their h's, you know"--Eugenia Chancellor did not make much way among her new acquaintances. The women allowed she was "pretty" and unassuming, but stupid or shy, they were not sure which. The men hooted at "pretty"--"lovely" or "beautiful" was nearer the mark--and hesitated about the "shy or stupid" suggestion, coming, however, in almost every case to allow that she was difficult to get on with--either "Chancellor bullied her at home," or she had married him without caring for him; that she was not happy was evident. At which proof of masculine discrimination, the wives and mothers held up their hands in scornful incredulity. It was "just like Fred, or Arthur, or `your papa,' to make a romantic mystery about her, because she is pretty. There is nothing plainer to see than that she is silent and stiff because she feels rather out of her element as yet. It is all strange to her, of course, having been brought up as she has been, and really she is to be felt for."

But the "feeling for her," giving itself vent in one or two instances in the direction of a disposition to patronise, was not responded to; and after a while the temporary sensation on the subject of Mrs Chancellor died away, especially when it oozed out that Lady Hereward had not yet called at Halswood.

Little cared Eugenia, as she ran upstairs to consult her lugubrious friend Mrs Grier on the subject of the prettiest and pleasantest rooms to be forthwith--fifteen days beforehand--prepared for her expected guests.

"My sister, Mrs Thurston, and my father, are coming the week after next," she announced to the housekeeper, ignoring the possibility of the yet un-posted letter of invitation receiving any but a favourable reply. "You must let me know if you think of _anything_ wanting for these rooms." And the bright expectation in the young face touched even Mrs Grier's unready sympathy in joy. She forgave Eugenia's presumptuous rejection of the gloomy chambers, long since deserted in favour of more cheerful quarters, by the master and mistress of the house, where the funereal four-posters still reigned, and was inspired to suggest ever so many tiny wants and improvements which sent her young mistress off to Chilworth in the brougham, in a pleasant excitement of novel housewifely importance. It was but seldom that interests of the kind offered themselves to Eugenia--another of the unfortunate blanks in her new life--for Mrs Grier, notwithstanding her dreams and visions, was, practically, an excellent head of affairs. Everything about the house was always in perfect order. If the under-servants proved inefficient or otherwise undesirable they were sent away, and Mrs Grier or Blinkhorn procured others; if the dinner was not thoroughly to Captain Chancellor's liking, one or other of this responsible pair was informed of the fact, and desired to see it remedied, or, in a case of unusual gravity, the "chef" himself would be summoned to receive personal instruction from his master, who considered himself, and very probably justly, no mean authority on gastronomical problems.

"There is really very little for me to do," wrote Eugenia once to her sister. "Beauchamp does not care for me to meddle in the housekeeping, and I can see it is far better done than it would be by me. All the new furniture has come, and of course it is beautiful. I took a good deal of interest in choosing it, but it isn't half such fun as when one has to think how one can make one's money get all one wants. And I think the rooms are too big to enjoy the prettiness of the things. Do you remember the choosing of your drawing-room carpet? I am afraid, Sydney dear, I am quite out of my element as a fine lady. There are no poor people, even, that I can hear of. They all seem dreadfully well off, and well looked after by the clergyman and the agent and their wives. I wish I could study more, but I think I have got lazy, or else it is the difference of having to do everything alone. There are lots of books in the library--many whose names even I never heard. I wish I had papa's direction! We get all our new books from town once a month, but they very seldom send the ones I want, and when they do I want you to talk them over with."

Sydney sighed as she read this letter. It was not often Eugenia wrote so despondently, but Sydney's perceptions were acute.

"Poor Eugenia," she thought. "It isn't only these outside things which are wrong, I fear. If other things had equalled her hopes, these would have been all right. The want lies deeper, I fear--the blank is one hard to fill. How I wish I could see her!"

The next week brought Eugenia's invitation. It would have been difficult to decline it. "You _must_ come," she wrote. "I am living in the thoughts of it, Sydney; it will be absolute cruelty to refuse. I cannot tell you how I long to see you all again."

So, though leaving home even for a few days, was now no small effort to Mr Laurence, and though Frank Thurston groaned a good deal in anticipation, he "hated fine houses and grand people," and all _his_ people, the East-enders of Wareborough, would go to the bad in double-quick time if he let them out of his sight for the best part of a week; who would take the night schools? who would see to the confirmation classes? etc, etc, etc--it ended, as Sydney had quietly determined it should, in a letter of acceptance being sent to Halswood by return of post. And Mrs Thurston took the opportunity of chaffing her husband a little on what she termed his growing self-conceit.

"`Un bon pretre,'" she said, "`c'est bien bon.' I quite agree with Jean Valjean. But still, Frank, of the very best of things it is possible to have too much."

Whereupon Frank told her she was very impertinent. There was little fear of these two misunderstanding each other.

There is a mischievous French proverb which tells us that "le malheur n'est jamais si pres de nous qu'alors que tout nous sourit." Things were certainly _more_ smiling than usual with Eugenia Chancellor the morning that she received Sydney's cheerful acceptance of the invitation to Halswood, and was graciously told by Beauchamp in answer to her announcement of the news "that he was glad they were coming, and he hoped the weather would be fine." But misfortune--disappointment, at least, was near at hand; misfortune in the shape of a plain-looking little old lady in a shabby pony carriage, who about an hour after luncheon this same day made her appearance under the ugly portico, and learning that Mrs Chancellor was at home, alighted, and was shown into the morning-room, giving a name for announcement to the footman newly imported from town, which, taken in conjunction with her unimposing appearance, somewhat excited that gentleman's surprise.

She had not driven in by the grand entrance, but by the second best lodge, that on the road leading to the village of Stebbing-le-Bray. Captain Chancellor, setting off on a long ride, passed the old lady in the funny little carriage, and, wondering who she could be, asked for information on the subject from the man at the lodge, a venerable person thoroughly up in local celebrities. The answer he received caused him to open his handsome blue eyes, and to change his programme for the afternoon. He rode out at the Stebbing lodge, made a cut across the country which brought him on to the Chilworth Road, and re-entering his own domain, dismounted at home twenty minutes after he had set off, to find his wife and the little old lady in evidently friendly converse in the morning-room.

Somewhat startled by her husband's unlooked-for reappearance, uncertain if he and her visitor were already acquainted, Eugenia hesitated a moment in introducing her companions. But the stranger was quite equal to the occasion.

"How do you do, Captain Chancellor?" she said, cordially. "I am so pleased to meet you at last. By _hearsay_, do you know, you are already an old friend of mine?"

Beauchamp bowed with a slight air of inquiry.

"A nephew of mine, or, to be exact, which they say women never are, a grand-nephew of my husband's, has so often spoken of you to me. You will remember him--George Vandeleur; he was in your regiment in the Crimea, though you have seldom met each other since?"

Captain Chancellor's face lightened up, and what Eugenia called his nicest look came over it. He had been very kind to young Vandeleur, at the time little more than a boy, and it was pleasant to find himself remembered.

Lady Hereward had the happiest knack of saying agreeable things, of pleasing when she wished to please. Those who liked her liked her thoroughly, and trusted her implicitly; but, on the other hand, those who disliked her were quite as much in earnest about it. And both parties, I suspect, coalesced in being more or less afraid of her, for, insignificant as she appeared, she could hit hard in certain directions, though her heart was true, her sympathies wide. Coming, perhaps, within Roma Eyrecourt's category of "those to whom it was easy to be good," there had certainly been nothing in the circumstances of her life to develop meanness in any form, and on this, in whatever guise she came across it--humbug, petty ambition, class prejudice--she was therefore, as is the tendency of poor humanity towards the foibles oneself "is not inclined to," apt to be rather too hard. Since birth she had been placed in a perfectly assured and universally recognised position. She had had nothing to be ambitious about; even her want of beauty had not amounted to a trial, for her powers of fascination, as is sometimes the case with plain women, had been more than compensatingly great; and before she was twenty she had had every unexceptionable _parti_ of the day at her feet. How it came to pass she was not "spoilt" those who knew her best often marvelled, but even they did not know all about her. For she had had her sorrows, had passed through a fiery furnace--how it all happened matters little, the love-story of a plain-looking old woman of sixty would hardly be interesting begun at the wrong end--and the gold of her nature had emerged, therefrom, unwasted and pure. In the end she had married, at twenty-two, Lord Hereward, a peer of great wealth and position, a man whom she liked and respected, and with whom she had bravely made the best of her life. Trouble was not over for her yet, however. She had two children, a son who grew up satisfactorily to man's estate, behaving himself creditably at school, and college, and everywhere, who in time married, as was to be expected, and became the centre of another family; and a daughter, who was as the apple of her mother's eye, whom she loved as strong natures only can love. And one day--one awful day--the little daughter died suddenly and painfully, and Margaret Hereward's heart broke.

And all the outside world said: "How sad for the poor Herewards; but what a blessing it was not the boy," and then forgot all about it, for the chief sufferer never reminded any one of her woe.

It was forty years ago now, and few remembered that a little Lady Alice Godwin had ever existed. In time, of course, her mother came to learn that even with a broken heart one can go on living, and her healthy nature reasserted itself in an increased power of sympathy--an active energy in lightening or, at least, sharing other women's sorrows. But still, as she grew older, she hardened in her special dislikes, her pet intolerances.

She went on talking about her nephew for a while, explaining, by the way, how it was she had come to make her first call at Halswood in so informal a fashion.

"I am staying at Stebbing Rectory for a day or two," she said. "A young cousin of mine is the wife of Mr Mervyn, the clergyman there. She has just got her first baby--a little girl;" she paused for an instant; "such a nice baby, and I came over to look after her a little. She has no mother. Hearing how very near I was to you, I thought I would not miss the opportunity of seeing you so easily. It is a long drive from Marshlands here. When you come to see me it must not be only for a call."

She did not tell that the calling on the new Mrs Chancellor, which had been a vague and indefinite intention in her mind before coming to Stebbing, had taken active form, from hearing from her cousin some of the local gossip about the stranger--that she was pretty, but so stiff and reserved that no one could get on with her; that some people called her awkward and underbred, others suspected that she was not happy (Mrs Mervyn's own opinion), but that from one cause or another her life bid fair to become a lonely and isolated one. And the sight of Eugenia's face rewarded the old lady for the kindly effort she had made. It was not so much her beauty, though Lady Hereward loved to see a pretty face; it was her sweet, bright, yet wistful expression, that straightway touched the maternal chord in her visitor's heart. Possibly, too, contradiction had something to do with the interest Eugenia at once awakened.

"Underbred, indeed!" she said to herself, contemptuously. "I wish I could teach some people I know, what good breeding really is. As to her being unhappy, I can't say. I must see more of her."

She acted at once on this determination, for, before she left, she invited her new young friends to spend three days of the next week but one at Marshlands. There was a particular reason for fixing this time; "George" was coming, and would be delighted to meet Captain Chancellor again.

"I would give you a choice if I could," she went on, fancying that she perceived a slight hesitation in Mrs Chancellor's manner, "for I really do want you to come. But I fear I cannot. We are going away the end of the same week to Hereward, for some time. We old people need a breath of sea air now and then."

"It is exceedingly kind of you. I should have liked _very_ much to go to you the week after next," began Eugenia, looking as if she meant what she said. "It is so unlucky--but I am afraid we must decline. We are engaged for the whole of that week at home. You remember, Beauchamp? I heard this morning that--"

"I think you have made a confusion between the week after next and the week after _that_," said Captain Chancellor, blandly. "I don't know of anything to prevent our accepting Lady Hereward's invitation. We did expect some friends; but, don't you remember, Eugenia, that Colonel Masterton put off his visit for a week?"

"Yes," said Eugenia, quietly; "I remember."

"Then may I hope to see you," asked Lady Hereward, feeling a little puzzled, "on Tuesday?--that will be the 22nd. George comes the same day."

"Certainly," said Beauchamp. "We shall be delighted to join you."

And "Thank you--you are very, very kind," said Eugenia again.

The tone in which the simple words were uttered was almost girlishly cordial, yet, somehow, Lady Hereward did not feel satisfied. "Her manner _is_ a little peculiar," she thought to herself, as she drove back again to Stebbing-le-Bray, "though at first she seemed so frank. I hope my invitation did not really interfere with anything. Could it be shyness that made her not want to come? How very lovely her eyes are! I wonder if my Alice's eyes would have looked like that--they were brown. Alice would not have been so pretty. And, dear me, by this time she might have had a daughter as old as that child! Ah, my little Alice!"

When Lady Hereward had gone, Eugenia sat still for a moment or two, then rose and left the room. In the hall she met her husband.

"Where are you going?" he said. "Come in here for a minute," opening the door of his study, beside which they were standing. She followed him, but did not sit down. "Tell me," he went on, "how do you like the old lady?"

"Very much," replied Eugenia; then turned again, as if eager to go.

"What are you in such a hurry about? Can't you wait a minute?" he said, impatiently. "Where are you going?"

"To write to Sydney, of course, to put off their visit," she answered, her lips quivering. "I must do it at once."

"Confound Sydney!" he broke out, rudely. "Your temper, Eugenia, is enough to provoke a saint. Wait an instant--do be reasonable--why can't you propose to Sydney to--"

But he had gone too far. Eugenia turned and looked at him for a moment with the unlovely light of angry indignation in her eyes; then left the room quietly.

"By Jove!" said Beauchamp, when left to himself, "I begin to suspect I have been a great fool, after all!"

But reflection and a cigar soothed him a little; half an hour later he followed his wife to her boudoir. She was writing busily.

"Eugenia," he began, "I am sorry for my rudeness just now, but you are very unreasonable. Why can't you write to your people, and ask them to come on the Friday? We return then. Any one but you would understand my reasons for wishing to go to Marshlands."

"I do understand them, rather too well," replied his wife, coldly. "As for asking my people to come on Friday, it is out of the question. My brother-in-law cannot be away on Sunday; and besides, I cannot ask my father and Sydney--neither of them strong--to come so long a journey for only two days."

"Why for only two days?"

"Because on Monday all _your_ friends are coming, and you do not wish mine to be here at the same time."

"I never said anything of the kind," exclaimed Beauchamp, angrily, aware nevertheless that he had _thought_ something very much of the kind. It was not that he was ashamed of Mr Laurence or Sydney; he liked them both very well; but there had been a good deal of "chaff" about his Wareborough marriage, and he had imagined more. He could ill bear chaff, and his constitutional and avowed arrogance laid him peculiarly open to it in certain directions. How he had sneered and made fun of other men in the old days for being "caught" by a pretty face or a pair of bright eyes! He was not ashamed of his marriage--he was proud of his wife in herself--but on the whole, he preferred that his old friends, on their first visit, should not find the house full of his Wareborough relations-in-law. But he had not imagined that Eugenia suspected this.

"I never said anything of the kind," he repeated, working himself into a rage. "But I warn you, Eugenia, if you don't take care what you are about, you will drive me into thinking, and saying too, many things I never wish to think or say."

She got up from her seat, and stood facing him.

"I know what you mean," she said, huskily, a white despair creeping over her face. "You mean that you regret your marriage. Why did you do it at all then?--tell me. Why did you make me think you everything great and noble, to open my eyes now like this? Why did you not leave me where I was, happy and loved, instead of making me care for you? Why did you ask me to be your wife?"

"Why, indeed? You may well ask," replied Captain Chancellor, in a bitter, contemptuous tone.

Then he turned and left the room. He put down all she had said to "temper," of course; but some of her words had wounded and mortified him not a little.

Eugenia stood there where he had left her, in blank, bewildered misery. Only one thought glanced with any brightness through the black cloud of wretchedness which seemed to choke her.

"He did love me once," she said to herself. "If all the rest was a dream, still he did love me once."

And but for this, she thought she _must_ have died.

VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER FOUR.

"BY THE SPRING."

Life, that dares send
A challenge to his end,
And when it comes, say, "Welcome, friend."

Crashaw.

Tuesday the 22nd came, but Captain Chancellor set off on his visit to Marshlands alone. Eugenia was ill--too ill to leave her room, though better than she had been. The restrained suffering of the last few weeks, the unhealthily reserved and isolated life she had begun to live--she to whom sympathy was as the air she breathed--all had told upon her; and the excitement of the painful discussion with her husband the day of Lady Hereward's unfortunate visit, had been the finishing stroke. After that she gave way altogether.

She was not sorry to be ill. On the whole, she felt it the best thing that could have happened to her. She was glad to be alone. She was very glad now that Sydney's visit had been deferred. With all her haste and impulsiveness, there was in her a curious mixture of clear-headedness and reasoning power. She liked to understand things-- to get to the bottom of them. Now that she had left off pretending to deceive herself with false representations--now that she had ceased to try to cheat herself into imagining she was happy--she found a strange, half-morbid satisfaction in dissecting and analysing the whole--her own character and her husband's; the past lives of both, and the influences that had made them what they were; the special, definite causes of their discordancy.

"He is not--I see it plainly now," she said to herself, with a curious, hopeless sort of calm, "he is not in the very least the man I imagined. _That_ Beauchamp has never existed. Is it just, therefore, that I should blame the real one for not being what he never was?" Here she got a little puzzled, and tried to look at it from a fresh point of view. "And being what he is, and no more, why should I not make the best of it? It seems to me there is something repulsive and unworthy in the thought. I would almost rather go on being miserable. Yet I suppose many women have had to do it. I could fancy Sydney, for instance, doing it, and never letting any one suspect she had had it to do. In time, perhaps, I may find it easier, or grow callous."

Then she would set to work to think out a new role for herself--that of an utterly lonely, impossibly self-reliant woman, living a life of self-abnegation, of lofty devotion to duty--unappreciated devotion, unsuspected abnegation--such as no woman has ever yet lived since women were. Seen through the softening medium of physical weakness, not amounting to actual suffering, this new way of looking at things came to have a certain attraction for her. The idea of total and lasting sacrifice of all hopes of personal happiness, all yearning for sympathy, was grand enough and impossible enough to recommend itself greatly to this ardent, extreme nature, to which anything was better than second bests, nothing so antagonistic as compromise in any form.

"I have staked my all and lost," she said to herself with a sort of piteous grandiloquence; "there is nothing left me but duty and endurance; for though he _did_ love me, I doubt if he does so now. I am not necessary to his happiness. He does not and cannot understand me."

Only unfortunately there were two or three little difficulties in the way of settling down comfortably to this conclusion. In the first place, notwithstanding her love of theorising, and of idealising even the woes of her lot, Eugenia was essentially honest, and being so she could not allow to herself that her conduct had been blameless, especially in this last and most serious disagreement. She had said things which she knew would gall and irritate her husband. In the morbid excitement of the moment she owned to herself that she had even wished them to have this effect, that his behaviour might excuse the violence of her indignation. And her conduct in general--her conduct ever since their marriage--ever since, at least, the first few weeks of careless happiness--how did that now appear to her from her new point of view? She knew she had been gentle, and in a superficial sense unselfish; with but very rare exceptions she had entirely merged her own wishes in those of her husband, had opposed nothing that he had suggested. Such submission, such sinking of her own individuality, had been unnatural and forced, completely foreign to her character. And, what had been its motive? Not the highest--far from it. It had not been that she really believed that in so doing she was acting her wifely part to perfection; it had not been earnest endeavour after the best within her reach that had prompted her, but rather, a cowardly, a selfish determination to close her eyes to the facts of her life--a weak refusal to see anything she did not want to see--the old wilful cry, "All or nothing; give me all or I die"--the shrinking from owning, even to herself, the self-willed impetuosity with which she had acted--the terror of acknowledging that she had been deceived, or rather, had deceived herself.

"Yes," she said, "I have been all wrong together. How selfish I have been too! Months ago how indignant I used to get with poor Sydney if she ever attempted, as she used to call it, to `clip my wings for me.' How angry I was with papa when he suggested that we should defer our marriage till we knew a little more of each other! How selfish I was in Paris, too--selfish and unsympathising in Beauchamp's change of fortune! Perhaps, after all, it is no more than I have deserved that he should feel as he does now."

The reflection was a wholesome one, and its influence softening, and Beauchamp had been very kind since her illness. He might not understand her, but at times she felt it was certainly going too far to say that he no longer cared for her. He seemed to have already quite forgotten all about this last discussion, and in truth the impression it had made upon him had been by no means a deep one. "It was all a fit of temper of Eugenia's," he said to himself, and as one of his fixed ideas was that such a thing as a woman without a temper had never existed, he resigned himself to his fate, with the hope that his share of this unavoidable drawback to the charms of married life might be small.

Up to the last Captain Chancellor hoped that his wife would be able to accompany him to Marshlands. To do him justice, he was very reluctant to go without her.

"It is such a pity," he said. "It would be just what I should like, for you to see a good deal of Lady Hereward. It isn't every one that she takes to, I can tell you."

"I like her in herself," said Eugenia; "the only thing I dislike her for is that she is Lady Hereward. I got tired of her name before I had ever seen her."

The moment she had said this she regretted it. Beauchamp's brow clouded over.

"Of course," he replied, coldly, "if you set yourself against her I can't help it. Perhaps the best plan would be for me to write making an excuse for us both, and have done with the acquaintance. I am sick of discussions about everything I propose."

It was hard upon her; it was so seldom, so very seldom she had opposed him in anything, or even expressed an opinion.

"I am very sorry I cannot go," she said, "but your giving up going is not to be thought of. There is no reason for it. I am not seriously ill. There is nothing wrong with me but what a few days' rest will set right."

This was true. So Captain Chancellor set off for Marshlands alone, and Eugenia, solitary and suffering, spent in her own room the week she had so eagerly anticipated.

Time went on. November past, midwinter is soon at hand, and Christmas had come and gone before, contrary to the Chilworth doctor's sanguine opinion, Mrs Chancellor was at all like herself again. It was a dreary winter to her. Had she been in good health, some reaction from the hopeless depression which had gradually taken hold of her would have been pretty sure to set in--a reaction, perhaps, of a sound and healthy nature; possibly, nevertheless, of the reverse. This, however, was not the case. At the beginning of her illness, things had looked more promising: her husband's kindness had touched and softened her, her own reflections had pointed the right way. But as the days went on and Eugenia felt herself growing weaker instead of stronger, her clearer view of things clouded over again. It takes a great reserve of mutual trust and sympathy to stand the wearing effects of a trying though not acute illness. Beauchamp got tired of his wife's never being well--so at least she fancied--tired of it, and then indifferent, or if not indifferent, accustomed to it. And whether this was really the case or not, there was some excuse for her believing it to be so, for the habitual small selfishness of his nature was thrown out in strong relief by circumstances undoubtedly trying.

"If people looked forward to realities, they would choose their husbands and wives differently. It is only about a year ago since I first met Beauchamp. Oh, how silly and ignorant I must have been! How perfect life--life with him--looked to me," thought Eugenia, bitterly.

She was more than usually depressed that day. Captain Chancellor had left home to spend a week at Winsley, where a merry Christmas party was expected, and though Eugenia had no wish to accompany him, even had she been able to do so, though she had not put the slightest difficulty in the way of his going, yet his readiness to do so wounded and embittered her. For he had got into the habit of often leaving home now--never for very long at a time, certainly--never without making every arrangement for her comfort; but yet the fact of his liking to go, increased her unhappy state of mind. Everything seemed against her. During all these months she had never succeeded in seeing her own people. Another invitation had been sent to them and accepted. For Eugenia had had the unselfishness to place the deferring of their first visit in a natural and favourable light, making it appear to be quite as much her own doing as her husband's, and a subject of great regret to both.

"Better that they should think I have grown cold and indifferent even," she thought, "than that they should suspect the truth." But no one except Frank had at this time thought anything of the kind.

"_I_ won't go, another time," he growled. "I never heard anything so cool in my life. If it is Eugenia's own doing, I don't want to have anything more to say to her. If not, I pity her, but she chose her husband herself."

And Sydney had some difficulty to smooth him down again, and to gain his consent to the acceptance of the second invitation when in course of time it made its appearance.

It was accepted, but the visit did not take place. Before the date fixed for it arrived, Mr Laurence had another attack of illness, from which he only recovered sufficiently to be moved to a milder place, where for a few weeks, Sydney, though at no small personal inconvenience, accompanied him. Something was said by her in one of her letters to Eugenia, suggestive of her joining them and taking her share in the nursing and cheering of their father; but the proposal met with no response. Loyal and true-hearted as she was, Sydney felt chilled and disappointed, and said no more. But all through the winter, in reality passed by Eugenia in loneliness, and suffering, and yearning for sympathy, which only a mistaken desire to spare her sister sorrow prevented her expressing--all these months Sydney pictured her as happy and prosperous, so free from cares herself as to be in danger of forgetting their existence in the lives of others. For the more steadily hopeless Eugenia grew, the more cheerfully she wrote. And forced cheerfulness often bears a strong resemblance to heartlessness.

"I am glad and thankful she is happy," thought Sydney, "and she certainly must be so, for it is not in her to conceal it if she were not; but I did not think prosperity would have changed Eugenia."

Nor would she, for any conceivable consideration, have owned to any one, least of all perhaps to her husband, that she _did_ think so.

Mr Laurence had fortunately no misgivings on the subject of his elder daughter. She was happy, she wrote regularly and affectionately--she had twice fixed a time for him to visit her, but circumstances had come in the way. It was all quite right. He loved her as fondly as ever, with perhaps a shade _more_ fondness than the child "who was ever with him," whose new ties had in no wise been allowed to interfere with her daughterly devotion; it never occurred to him that Eugenia's affection could be dimmed.

"I should like to see her," he said sometimes--"I should like to see her very much--in her own home too. But by the spring we shall be able to arrange for it; by the spring, no doubt, I shall be more like myself again, and able to manage a little going about. We must go together, Sydney, my dear, as Eugenia wished."

And Sydney said, "Yes, by the spring they must arrange it." But a shadowy misgiving, that had visited her not unfrequently of late--a little, painful, choking feeling in her throat, a sudden moisture in her eyes, made themselves felt, when she looked at her father's thin, worn face, and heard him talk about "the spring;" and she wondered, as so many loving watchers wonder, "if the doctors had told her the whole truth."

There had always been a certain unworldliness about Mr Laurence--a gentle philosophy, an unexacting unselfishness, and of late all these had increased. Practical as he had proved himself in his far-seeing philanthropy, he was a man to whom it came naturally to live much in the unseen, to whom the thought that "to this life there is a to-morrow," was full of encouragement and consolation--a to-morrow in more senses than the one of individual blessedness--a to-morrow when the work begun here, however poor and imperfect in itself, shall be carried on, purified, strengthened, rendered a thousand times more powerful for good--a to-morrow even for the races yet unborn in this world. All this he believed, and his life had shown that he did so. Yet many people shook their heads over his "want of religious principle," his "dangerously lax notions," and prophesied that no blessing could follow the labours of such a man. But such sayings little troubled Sydney's father. He smiled with kindly tolerance, and thought to himself that some time or other such things would come to be viewed differently.

About the middle of February, Mr Laurence and his daughter returned home to Wareborough. On the last day of March, Sydney's boy was born--a strong, handsome, satisfactory baby--with whom the young parents were greatly delighted. Sydney recovered her strength quickly, and before April was over, Mr Laurence, who had seemed much better of late, and who had taken wonderfully to his grandson, began to talk again of the often-deferred visit to Eugenia.

"It would be a nice little change for you, Sydney, and Eugenia would be so pleased to see her little nephew. Her letters are full of questions about him. I have a great, mind to write to her myself, and ask what time next month would be convenient for her to receive us. I think my doing so would please her. I should be sorry for her to think we had not taken the first opportunity of going to see her. They are sure to be at home next month?"

"Yes," said Sydney, "I remember Eugenia's saying in one of her letters, that they were not going to town this year. I don't know why, for not long ago she said something about their probably buying a house in town. Well, father dear, baby and I--and Frank too, I dare say--will be ready whenever you arrange for it with Eugenia."

But Mr Laurence never wrote. The very next day--it was early in May now--the Thurstons got a message, asking Sydney to go to see him as soon as she could. There was "nothing very much the matter," said the note, which he had written himself--"a slight return of the old symptoms," that was all; but it was enough to send his daughter to him without loss of time. Enough, too, to make the doctors look grave, and warn Mrs Thurston that there was every appearance of a long and trying illness before them, unless the next day or two brought a decidedly favourable change. No such change came. Divided between anxiety for her father and for her little infant, Sydney had almost more upon her hands than she could overtake. A few days after the commencement of Mr Laurence's illness, the Thurston household took up its quarters temporarily in Sydney's old home, that she might be the better able to give to her father the constant care and attention he required. At first he seemed to improve again, and Sydney was able to send a better report to Eugenia. But another week saw a change for the worse. Nothing _very_ serious, said the doctors--nothing to cause immediate anxiety--but sufficiently discouraging, nevertheless. And then there came the usual injunction, "At all costs, the patient's spirits were to be kept up, his every wish complied with."

One morning Mr Laurence woke out of an uneasy sleep in a state of feverish agitation unusual to him.

"Sydney," he said, excitedly, when his daughter entered the room, "I have had a painful dream about Eugenia. It seemed to me that she was unhappy. I must see her at once. If I were well I would go to her. As it is, you must send for her. Do you think she can come to-day? I cannot rest till I have seen her."

Sydney was greatly startled, but she retained her presence of mind.

"I will see about it at once," she replied, soothingly, "and no doubt she will come immediately. I wish I had thought of it before, dear father; but we fancied you would enjoy seeing her more when you were a little stronger."

"Never mind," he said: "it will be all right if you will send at once now."

Two hours later Sydney came back to tell him it was done. A messenger had already started for Halswood. "I thought it better than telegraphing," she said; "they are so far from the station;" but Mr Laurence did not seem to care to hear any details. He was quite satisfied with knowing that the thing was done, and before long he fell asleep again and slept calmly.

About three o'clock that afternoon a Chilworth fly drove up to the front entrance of Halswood; a gentleman alighted, rang the bell, and inquired if Captain Chancellor were at home. He was answered in the negative, the master of the house was out, would not be in till between four and five.

"Mrs Chancellor, then?"

Disappointment again. She was not well enough to see visitors. Could the gentleman send in his message?

The gentleman hesitated. The position was an awkward one. "Is there no one I can see? No friend, perhaps, staying in the house?" he inquired at last.

A gleam of light--the footman, murmuring an unintelligible name, turns appealingly to Mr Blinkhorn in the background, who comes forward.

"Miss Heyrecourt is staying here at present, sir--a relation of my master's," Mr Blinkhorn condescended to explain, going on to express his readiness to convey the stranger's card to the young lady if he would favour him with the same.

A look of relief overspread the countenance of Gerald Thurston, for he it was who had undertaken to carry the sick man's message to his daughter, Frank being hopelessly engaged in clerical duties.

"Miss Eyrecourt?" exclaimed Mr Thurston, hunting for a calling-card; "I am very glad to hear it. She will see me, I am sure."

Mr Blinkhorn and his satellites thought this looked suspicious, and afterwards retailed the stranger's delight at the mention of Miss Eyrecourt's name for the benefit of the servant's hall. In another minute Gerald was shaking hands with Roma, and explaining to her the reason of his sudden appearance. At first her expression was bright and cheerful; she was evidently pleased to see him again and interested in what he had to tell. But as he went on, her face grew grave--graver even than there seemed cause for.

"There is nothing immediate to be feared," Gerald said, in conclusion; "Mr Laurence may linger for months as he is, or he _may_, it's just possible, he may recover. I saw the doctor after I had seen Sydney this morning. I thought it would be more satisfactory for Eu--for Mrs Chancellor to hear I had done so."

"Yes," said Roma, "it was a good thought;" but she spoke a little absently, and still looked very grave. "I hope Eugenia will be able to go at once," she went on. "She is not very strong, but I think she is quite well enough to go, and I am sure she will think so. Only you know," with a smile, "she must consult her husband too, and I don't know what he will say. You see, she has been more or less an invalid for so long."

"I did not know it," said Gerald, with concern and surprise. "Indeed, I don't think Sydney does."

"Does she not?" exclaimed Roma. "Eugenia must have concealed it then. A mistake, I think. Those things always lead to misapprehension. But she is really much better now. Shall I go and tell her? She had a headache to-day, that was why she didn't want to see any one. There is not much time to spare. When did you say you must leave?"

"The best train leaves Chilworth at six; the next at 7:30," he replied.