Chapter IX: Part 9

"And do you think he really meant it?" questioned Mrs Dalrymple. "Certainly I have not seen much of him of late years, but I used to know him well, and I must say it is not the _sort_ of thing I should have imagined him doing. He must be either a better or a worse man than I have supposed--possibly both."

Eugenia did not reply to the last observation: perhaps she did not hear it. But she answered Mrs Dalrymple's question.

"I do think he meant it. And I think he will continue to mean it unless it is at once discouraged," she said; "at once, before he has time to do anything rash with regard to Miss Eyrecourt. It will not be enough for me to refuse to see him--I must go away. While I stay here, any unlucky chance might bring us together again, like this morning. And I cannot trust myself, now that he knows--for he _does_ know," she turned her face away, "that--that I do care for him, that I would make any sacrifice for him except doing wrong, or letting him do wrong. Though, indeed, I must not boast: no one knows how hard it is not to do wrong, till one is tried."

"My poor child," said Mrs Dalrymple, quite as tenderly now as at the beginning of the conversation. And then she added, "I wonder what we should do. I wish Henry were back."

"When do you think he will be back?" asked Eugenia, influenced not so much by her friend's wifely belief in Mr Dalrymple's diplomatic powers as by her own anxiety to obtain his approval of her at once leaving Nunswell.

"I don't know. Not before evening," replied her friend.

"And something must be done--should be done before post-time," said Eugenia. "He said he would call to see me; would it do for me to write a note to be given him when he comes? It will be so difficult to say it. Oh dear, oh dear!"

She got up from her seat, and walked to the window and back again, her hands clasped, in restless misery. There came a knock at the door.

"A gentleman to see Miss Laurence, if you please, ma'am," said Mrs Dalrymple's Bertha, importantly. "This is his card. He asked for the young lady staying with you, ma'am."

Mrs Dalrymple took the card mechanically, and glanced at the name as if there were still any possibility of mistake.

"Captain Chancellor," the two words stared her in the face, and down in the corner in little letters--"203rd (East Woldshire) Regiment."

It all looked so straightforward and aboveboard: there was no apparent consciousness of conduct or intentions "unbecoming an officer and a gentleman." And yet the girl he was calmly proposing to treat with ignominy and indignity was her own cousin; the girl for whose sake he proposed so to dishonour himself actually a guest in her own charge! Mrs Dalrymple felt more and more perplexed. How could the young man have the audacity to send up his card in this brazen-faced way? Surely there must be some strange mistake. A sudden thought struck her. She turned to Eugenia, standing pale, and with great, wistful eyes, beside her.

"He does mean it, you see," whispered the girl.

"Yes, I see," replied the matron. Then turning to the servant: "Bertha, say to Captain Chancellor we shall see him immediately," and when Bertha had departed on her errand, "Eugenia, my love," she said gently, "I think it will be best for _me_ to see him."

"Very well. Thank you very much," replied Eugenia, yet with a wild, unreasonable regret that she had been so taken at her word, that fate had not _forced_ her into seeing him again, into the very danger her better nature so dreaded and shrank from.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER SIX.

SUNSHINE.

... All hearts in love use their own tongues:
Let every eye negotiate for itself,
And trust no agent.

_Much Ado about Nothing_.

Captain Chancellor was standing by the window when Mrs Dalrymple entered the room. As the sound of the door opening caught his ear, he turned sharply round with a look of eager expectancy on his fair, handsome face, which did not escape the notice of Eugenia's self-constituted guardian, and notwithstanding his habitual good breeding and self-possession, he did not altogether succeed in concealing the disappointment which was caused him by the sight of his old friend's substantial proportions in the place of the girlish figure he had been watching for. He was eager to see Eugenia again. Unimpulsive though he was by nature, little as he had dreamt but three short hours before of ever again seeing her, of holding her in his arms and calling her his own, he was now almost passionately anxious for her presence. Away from her, he had found it difficult to realise, to justify to himself, this rash, unpremeditated deed he had done--a deed at variance with all his preconceived ideas, all the intentions of his life. But beside her, in the light of her sweet eyes, in the sense of her loveliness, of her delicate grace--above all, of her clinging trust in and entire devotion to himself, he felt that all his scruples and misgivings would vanish into air. He would feel satisfied then of what he tried to believe he felt satisfied of now, that being what he was, a man and not a statue, a "gentleman" who (in his own sense) held honour high, and would scorn to take advantage of a woman's weakness, he could not have acted otherwise. Fortified thus, he could brave all,--his friends' probable "chaff" on his weakness, "to think of Chancellor's throwing himself away after all for a pair of bright eyes;" his sister's certain disapproval, Roma's possible contempt. These, and more practical disagreeables, in the shape of poverty, comparatively speaking, at least; the loss of the personal luxuries which even with his limited means had, as a bachelor, been within his easy reach; the general, indescribable descent from the position of a much-made-of young officer without encumbrances, to that of a struggling captain in a line regiment with a delicate wife and too probable family--all these appalling visions already fully recognised, Beauchamp had forthwith set to work to make up his mind to. But he was thirsting for his reward. He was in a very good humour with himself. For the first time in his life he had acted purely on an impulse, and this impulse he imagined to be a much nobler one than it really was. He did not exactly call his conduct by fine names to himself, but in his heart he longed to hear Eugenia do so. He loved her tenderly, he said now to himself that he certainly did so, yet not hitherto so vehemently that he could not have put his love on one side in acknowledgment of weightier considerations. He had been shocked by the change in her appearance, and to some extent took blame to himself in the matter, yet, even while doing so, a slight, a very slight tinge of contempt for her weakness and transparency, mingled itself with his concern and self-reproach. She was not certainly of the stuff of a "Clara Vere de Vere;" there was an amount of undisciplined, unsophisticated effusiveness about her, hardly in accordance with his notion of "thorough-breeding," yet such as she was she was infinitely sweet; he was only longing to have her beside him to tell her so, to clasp her in his arms again, and kiss the colour into her soft white cheeks.

So it was really very disappointing, instead of Eugenia, to be brought face to face with Mary Dalrymple. He made the best of it, however--in a general way he was very clever at doing so. He came forward with his usual gently pleasant smile, his hand outstretched in greeting, murmuring something about being so pleased, so very pleased to see Mrs Dalrymple again. She hardly appeared to take in the sense of his words.

"How do you do, Captain Chancellor?" she said as she shook hands. Afterwards he fancied there had been a very slight hesitation in her manner before doing so, but at the time his complete unsuspiciousness prevented his imagining the possibility of such a thing. "It is quite an unexpected pleasure to meet you here."

"Yes," he answered cautiously, uncertain to what extent Eugenia might have taken Mary into her confidence, and feeling his way before committing himself; "yes, I thought my turning up would be a surprise you."

"I thought you were still at Winsley," said Mrs Dalrymple, also feeling her way.

"Oh dear no," he replied. "Winsley is all very well for a fortnight, but six weeks of it would be rather too much of a good thing. I left Winsley some time ago. I am here now with an old friend of mine. Major Thanet, who has been very ill with rheumatic fever, and came down hero to recruit."

"And are you returning to Winsley again soon?" inquired Mrs Dalrymple, her suspicion increasing that they were playing at cross purposes in some direction.

"Oh dear no," he said again. "My leave is about up--I got a little more than my six weeks on Thanet's account. I am due at Bridgenorth next week."

"At Bridgenorth," repeated Mrs Dalrymple. "Oh, indeed; and do you remain here till then?"

"Upon my word I can't say," replied Captain Chancellor, with an approach to impatience in his tone. "I certainly didn't come here to sit being catechised by Mary Pevensey all the afternoon," he said to himself, waxing wroth at Mrs Dalrymple's cross questions and Eugenia's non-appearance. Then suddenly throwing caution to the winds, "To tell you the truth," exclaimed he, "my plans at present depend greatly upon yours."

"Upon ours--may I ask why?" inquired Eugenia's chaperone quietly, and without testifying the surprise her visitor expected.

"Because upon yours depend those of your visitor--at least so I suppose," answered Beauchamp, coolly. "Miss Laurence is staying with you. If she stays here till next week, I shall stay too; if she goes I shall probably go too."

"Where?" asked Mrs Dalrymple, looking up at him with a puzzled yet anxious expression on her comely face.

"To Wareborough! to ask her father to consent to her engagement to me," he replied stoutly. "I shall either see him or write to him at once from here."

"But--" began Mrs Dalrymple, coming to a dead stop.

"But what?"

"You can't marry two people."

"Certainly not. Has any one been telling you I intended doing so," he replied, beginning, in spite of his vexation, to laugh.

"Yes," answered Mrs Dalrymple, naively. "At least, not exactly that. But I was told some time ago that you were to be married to my cousin Roma next month, and of course I believed it. Eugenia thinks so too."

"Eugenia thinks so too," repeated Captain Chancellor, his face darkening. "How can she possibly think so? And whoever told her such an infernal falsehood, I should like to know?" he went on angrily, for it was unspeakably annoying to him that any shadow, however distorted, of his late relations to Roma should thus follow him about--should dim the brightness of the little-looked-for consolation that had offered itself.

Mrs Dalrymple was by no means taken aback by this outburst. "It was I that told Eugenia," she said simply.

"I beg your pardon," exclaimed Beauchamp at once, his manner softening. "Of course you, too, were misinformed. I wonder--" he hesitated.

"You wonder by whom?" said his hostess. "There is no reason why I should not tell you. It was Mrs Winter who mentioned it to me in a letter, as having been announced, or at least generally believed, at the Winsley Hunt Ball. And I had no reason to disbelieve it. To tell you the truth, it seemed to me to explain things a little."

Captain Chancellor did not inquire to what things she alluded. He took up the first part of her speech.

"Who is Mrs Winter, may I ask? I don't think I ever heard of her."

"She is an old friend of mine," replied Mrs Dalrymple. "Her husband is Major in the 19th Lancers, now at Sleigham. She wrote to thank me for having asked some of my friends near there to call on her--your sister especially--and in this letter she mentioned Roma's just announced engagement."

"But I am surprised you took such a piece of news at secondhand, my dear Mrs Dalrymple," said Beauchamp. "Had it been true, Roma would have been sure to write to tell you."

"I don't know that she would," replied Roma's cousin. "We do not write very often, and I know she has a large circle of friends. You might as well say it was strange of me not to write to congratulate her. I did think of doing so, but other things put it out of my head. Eugenia Laurence's illness for one thing--I was very anxious about her--and to tell you the real truth, Beauchamp," she went on, with a sudden change of tone, and addressing him as she had been accustomed to do in his boyhood, "I did not feel very able to congratulate either you or Roma as heartily as I should have wished to do in such circumstances, considering all I had seen and observed during your stay at Wareborough. I believe now I may have done you great injustice, and I fear poor dear Eugenia had suffered unnecessarily through me. But I think you will both forgive me," and she smiled up at him with all her old cordiality.

Captain Chancellor smiled too, with visible consciousness of no small magnanimity in so doing.

"All's well that ends well," he answered lightly, "though certainly in such matters it is best to take nothing on hearsay, and to be slow to pronounce on apparently inconsistent, conduct," he added rather mysteriously. "I must confess, however, that I can't understand Miss Laurence believing this absurd report--if she had done so till she met me again even, but after our--our conversation this morning?" he looked inquiringly at Mrs Dalrymple.

"Yes, she believes it at the present moment," replied she. "You said something which seemed to confirm it--about `breaking ties,' or something of the kind."

"Did I?" he said, colouring a little, and not altogether pleased at so much having been repeated by Eugenia to her friend. "It is a little hard upon one to have to explain all one's expressions at all sorts of times, you know. Of course what I said referred entirely to what my friends may think of it--Gertrude for instance--the imprudence and all that sort of thing. Of course till Gertrude _sees_ Eugenia, it is natural for her to think a good deal about the outside part of it-- prospects and position, you know. There is the strong prejudice against Wareborough and places of the kind, in the first place."

In saying this he forgot for the moment whom he was speaking to; or if he thought of her at all, it was as Mary Pevensey, not as Mrs Dalrymple, the wife of the Wareborough mill-owner. She looked up quickly, but she had long ago learnt indifference to such allusions on her own score. Eugenia's position, however, might be more open to discomfort therefrom.

"Then I advise Gertrude to get rid of all such prejudices at once," said the Wareborough lady, somewhat sharply.

Captain Chancellor did not reply. He might have smoothed down the little awkwardness by some judicious hint of apology, but he was not inclined to take the trouble; he was beginning to think he had had quite enough of his old friend for the present. She had shown a somewhat undesirable readiness to place herself _in loco matris_ towards Eugenia, one of whose attractions, to his mind, lay in the fact that marriage with her entailed upon him no Wareborough or other matron in the shape of mother-in-law.

He got up from his chair and strolled to the window. "It looks very like rain," he observed amiably. "May I see Miss Laurence now, Mrs Dalrymple?"

Mrs Dalrymple looked uneasy--it was quite as bad as, or rather worse, she thought, than, if her twelve-year-old Minnie were grown up! In that case, at least, she could feel that the responsibility was a natural and unavoidable one, and, if she behaved unwisely, no one would have any right to scold her but Henry; but in the present instance--suppose Mr Laurence took it in his head to blame her for allowing matters to go so far without his consent? On the other hand, her soft heart was full of compassion for Eugenia, and eagerness to see her happy. Captain Chancellor read her hesitation.

"You need not feel any responsibility about it," he said. "To all intents and purposes I assure you the thing is done. I have already written to Mr Laurence," he took a letter out of his pocket and held it up to her, "and really it is too late to stop my seeing Eugenia. My chief reason for wishing to do so is to clear up the extraordinary misapprehension you told me of. It is only fair to me to let me put all that right. And it would be only cruel to her to leave things as they are. She is not strong, and I can't bear her to suffer any more." The genuine anxiety in the last few words carried the day.

"I didn't think of not explaining things to her," said Mrs Dalrymple, rising irresolutely from her seat as she spoke. "_I_ could have done that. However, I daresay it is better for you to see her yourself."

"I am quite sure it is," said Captain Chancellor. "And to confess all my wickedness to you, had you prevented my seeing Miss Laurence here openly, I should, I assure you, have done my best to see her some other way. You could not have put a stop to either of us walking in the gardens, for instance?"

He smiled as he paid it; there was a little defiance in the smile. Mrs Dalrymple sighed gently, and shook her head.

"You were always a very self-willed little boy, Beauchamp," she remarked, as she at last departed on her errand. Then she put her head in again at the door with a second thought.

"You will not blame me if Eugenia does not wish to see you at once?" she said. "She has been very much upset this morning, and perhaps it may be better to let her rest a little, and see you this evening."--"And by then Henry will be back," she added in her own mind, with a cowardly sense of satisfaction that in that case her lord and master would go shares in the possible blame.

"By all means beg Miss Laurence to do just as she likes," replied Beauchamp, urbanely. "I can call again at any hour this evening she likes to name, if she prefers it to seeing me now."

His misgivings, however, were of the slenderest. When he was left alone, he strolled again to the window, and stood looking out, but without seeing much of what was before him. He was thinking, more deeply perhaps than he had ever thought before; and when at last he heard the sound of the door opening softly, he started and looked round, not without a certain anxiety. But it was as he had expected, Eugenia herself,--and, oh, what a transfigured Eugenia! Never yet had he seen her as he saw her now. Notwithstanding the still evident fragility of her appearance, there was about her whole figure a brightness, a soft radiance of happiness impossible to describe. Her brown hair seemed to have gained new golden lights; her eyes, always sweet, looked deeper and yet more brilliant; there was a flush of carnation in her cheeks over which lugubrious Major Thanet would have shaken his head, which Beauchamp at the moment thought lovelier than any rose-tint he had ever seen.

She came forward quickly,--more quickly than he advanced to meet her. He seemed almost startled by her beauty, and looked at her for a moment without speaking. He could hardly understand her perfect absence of self-consciousness, her childlike "abandon" of overwhelming joy.

"Beauchamp, oh, Beauchamp," she exclaimed, as their hands met, "she has told me it was all a mistake, and, oh, I am so very happy!"

So she was, unutterably happy. Life for her, she felt, could hold no more perfect moment than this, and that there could be anything unbecoming in expressing her happiness, above all to him to whom she owed it, who shared it, as she believed, to the full, never in the faintest degree occurred to her. She did not think her lover cold or less fervent in his rejoicing than herself; she trusted him too utterly for such an idea to be possible to her, even had there been more cause for it than there really was. For, after the first instant, Captain Chancellor found it easy to respond to her expressions of thankfulness and delight; found it too by no means an unpleasing experience to be hailed by this lovely creature as the hero of her dreams, the fairy prince whom even yet she could hardly believe had chosen her--a very Cinderella as she seemed to herself in comparison with him--out of all womankind to be his own. And, even if a shade more reserve, a trifle more dignity, would have been better in accordance with his taste, his notion of the perfectly well-bred bearing in such circumstances, after all, was there not every excuse for such innocent shortcoming, such sweet forgetfulness? She was so young, he reflected, had seen nothing, or worse than nothing, of society,--for far better for a girl to be brought up in a convent than in the mixed society of a place like Wareborough,--it was only a marvel to see her as she was. And deeper than these reflections lay another consciousness of excuse in his mind, which yet, even to himself, he would have shrunk from the bad taste of putting into words,--the consciousness that it was not every girl whose bridegroom elect was a Beauchamp Chancellor!

"What a child it is!" he murmured to himself, as he stroked back the sunny brown hair from the white temples, and looked smilingly down into the liquid depths of the sweet, loving eyes. There would be a great deal to teach her, he thought to himself; some things perhaps he must help her to unlearn; but with such a pupil the prospect of the task before him was not appalling. Suddenly there recurred to him the memory of the misapprehension of his words of which Mrs Dalrymple had told him. This must be set right at once,--his _fiancee_ must be taught to view such things differently, to recognise the established feelings of the world--his world--on such matters.

"Eugenia, my dearest," he began, rather gravely, and the gravity reflected itself in her face as instantly as a passing cloud across the sun is mirrored in the clear water of the lake beneath, "I want to ask you one thing. How could you distrust me, misinterpret me so, as Mrs Dalrymple tells me you did?"

"I never for an instant distrusted you," she answered quickly. "At the worst--at the very worst--I never doubted you. I believed you were bound in some way,--bound by ties which in honour you could not break; but, Beauchamp, I never blamed you, or doubted that we should not have been separated had it been in your power to avoid it. Distrust you? Oh, no; I knew too well. I judged you by myself."

"My darling!" he replied, kissing her again. Her sentiments were very pretty, very romantic, and so forth, and not objectionable considering she was a woman, but still hardly to the purpose. And, woman though she was, she must learn to take less poetical and high-flown, more conventional and "accepted," views of things. Yet notwithstanding his pleasing sense of masculine superiority, he had winced a little inwardly while she spoke. For a moment there flashed before him an impulse of perfect honesty and candour, a temptation to tell her what small ground she had had for this innocent faith of hers,--a sort of yearning to be loved by her for what he was, and no more.

"But, no," he decided, "it would not do. If she once heard about Roma, she would never forget it. It would spoil all. If she did not resent my admiration for Roma, she would resent my having amused myself and her at Wareborough with what I never then dreamt would end seriously with either of us, at the very time I was counting on all coming straight with the other. She would never believe that I really cared for her, as most certainly I do. No, it would never do. Her head, poor dear, is cram-full of belief in first love and only love, and all the rest of the school-girl creed, and I am sure I don't want to disturb it, or to awake any nonsensical jealousy."

For that the green-eyed, hydra-headed monster lies _somewhere_ sleeping in every woman's heart, Captain Chancellor doubted as little as that there are fish in the sea or smouldering fires in Mount Vesuvius. And that no wife has a right to peep behind the closed door of her husband's previous life, or to resent exclusion therefrom, was another of his not-to-be-disputed axioms. So he only smiled and called her his darling, and put away from him the momentary impulse to risk all by confiding to her the true history of the events and feelings of the last few months.

"But in another sense you distrusted me," he went on after a little pause, speaking gravely again and with some hesitation, as if fearful of hurting her; "how could you reconcile my--my manner to you this morning with what you were then believing about me?"

"I didn't reconcile it," answered Eugenia, naively; "I only thought, as I had done before, that honour and inclination were pointing different ways;" here she stopped abruptly and blushed crimson. "It sounds dreadfully conceited to say this," she added, "but you asked me, and I _must_ tell you everything now, must not I? I was so bitterly sorry for you, and, oh, so miserable myself."

It was a little hard to say anything but sweet words to this, but Beauchamp persevered.

"But don't you see, dearest, had it been as you thought, I could not have broken my pledge without the grossest dishonour? Perhaps you hardly understand how these things are looked upon in the world, you are so young and innocent, and perhaps a tiny little bit too romantic," here he stroked her cheek fondly, "but you will learn that there are some things men of honour _cannot_ do, not even to win such a darling as you."

The crimson, hardly yet faded from the girl's face, deepened almost painfully. She was silent for a moment, and when she spoke it seemed to cost her a little effort.

"I am ignorant, very ignorant," she said gently. "But there are some things it doesn't require years or experience to know. I trust you will not find me ignorant in these. Don't think I thought you capable of breaking your word--not even for me," with a little smile and an attempt at playfulness, "but I thought--" she hesitated; "I have read that even the noblest and best may be terribly drawn two ways sometimes--there may come to the best of us tremendous temptations, may there not? Could the best people ever get to be the best if they had not felt temptation more strongly than others? And then, too, though one hardly likes to say so, there do seem sometimes to come times when ordinary rules--not real right and wrong of course, but our way of interpreting them--seem to fail one; when keeping one's word in one direction would be breaking it more unpardonably in another. Oh no, no, if I could put in words what I felt for and thought of you this morning, you would see I did you no dishonour."

There was a pathetic appeal in her tone as she uttered the last few words; she had said more than she intended, carried away by her subject, and the remembrance of the battle of feelings she herself had so recently fought her way through. Captain Chancellor was a little puzzled, a little annoyed, and a little surprised. It was not quite so easy to assert his superiority as he had imagined. Instinctively he sheltered himself by taking it for granted.

"My darling," he said again, "don't distress yourself. Don't imagine I meant to blame you. I only meant there are things and ways of looking at things which your innocence cannot have had experience of. But this need trouble neither of us now--you will never be alone now, even in thought. You will always trust me, dearest?"

"Yes," whispered Eugenia, softly, "and you will teach me all I don't know, and teach me to be better too, more worthy of you."

Captain Chancellor was enchanted. There was a docility about this sweet Eugenia of his, which he might have sought for long and vainly among more sophisticated maidens. She looked more irresistibly lovely than ever at this moment; there was a tender dewiness in her eyes which might turn into tears were it not kissed away, so he lost no time in averting the possible catastrophe. And Eugenia accepted his caresses and smiled her happiness, and stifled far, far away, down in the very furthest off corner of her heart, a little silly, absurd pain, an infinitesimal feeling of disappointment that she had not been _quite_ perfectly understood--stifled it so determinedly that she thought she had forgotten its having had even a momentary existence.

It was not till she was alone again--Beauchamp having departed to post his letter to her father--alone with her happiness, feeling almost overwhelmed by Mrs Dalrymple's congratulations and affectionate excitement (for Mary was too kind-hearted to obtrude the wet blanket of her somewhat uncomfortable sense of responsibility), that there recurred to Eugenia the remembrance of the expressions made use of by her lover, which had helped to continue the mystification regarding his relations with Miss Eyrecourt.

What could he have meant, she said to herself, by his allusions to ties which must be broken, obstacles to be overcome? She knew of none; her father, she felt satisfied, would never dream of opposing her wishes, would do all in his power to promote her happiness.

"I will ask Beauchamp to-morrow," she thought, and then again discarded the idea. She had a certain shrinking from alluding, however slightly, to the misapprehension which had cost her so much. Could it be that his friends had other views for him, and would be disappointed by his choice? "It maybe so," she thought; "I am neither rich nor grand. I should not wonder if his relations wish him to marry Miss Eyrecourt; or, possibly, he is afraid that his marriage may interfere with his getting on in his profession. _That_ he need not fear, I would never consent to be in his way. That is not my idea of a good wife," and she smiled confidently, as many another untried girl has smiled, at the thought of all she could do and suffer, and make the best of, for his sake. None of her reflections cast any shadow on her joy.

"We love each other, that is all that matters. And if there are any difficulties in the way, which I should know of, he will tell me, and if he does not, I can trust him."

The very next morning there came, forwarded from Wareborough to Mrs Dalrymple, a letter from Mrs Winter, in which after the usual feminine amount of irrelevant matter, she went on to say, "I have often wondered how soon you found out the incorrectness of the report about Miss Eyrecourt's engagement to Captain Chancellor. Indeed, it has been rather on my mind to set it right with you, but the very day after I last wrote I was called away to nurse my mother, and the last six weeks have been entirely spent in the sick-room," etc, etc. "And besides, as you are so nearly connected with the young lady, you are quite sure to have heard it was only, a piece of local gossip."

Eugenia smiled when her friend showed her the letter.

"How queerly things are twisted up together," she said, but she was happy enough now to forget all the past, save as enhancing the present. She was perfectly satisfied with Beauchamp's explanation (he did not feel called upon to make it a very ample one) of his inconsistent conduct: his misgivings as to the wisdom of marrying on his limited means, his ignorance of the real state of her feelings towards him, his anxiety to take no such step without the approval of the sister to whom he owed so much--all good reasons and founded on fact as far as they went.

"I hope your sister will like me," said Eugenia, thoughtfully. "It is with her Miss Eyrecourt lives, is it not? I think I liked Miss Eyrecourt, at least I think so _now_," with a smile and a blush which made her lover congratulate himself on his reticence.

Mr Dalrymple and Major Thanet both opened their eyes when they heard the news.

"Well, my dear," said the former, oracularly, "I trust you will never have reason to regret your share in the affair;" but to the young people themselves he was "mean" enough to be profusely congratulatory.

"Just like a man," thought poor Mrs Dalrymple. "If Henry were the least given to clairvoyance, and that sort of thing, I should really think he went off yesterday on purpose that he might be able to put the responsibility on to me."

Captain Chancellor's friend did not mince the matter. He had scented one of Beauchamp's little "affaires," but the actual denouement so suddenly announced to him by his companion was rather startling.

"Going to be married," he exclaimed; "and this morning you had as much idea of anything of the kind--at least in _this_ quarter," pointedly, "as--as," the gallant officer hesitated, at a loss for a sufficiently forcible expression, "as I have of marrying the man in the moon."

Beauchamp laughed shortly and contemptuously. Major Thanet's perceptions were not of the quickest.

"Are you sure you know what you are about, my dear fellow?" he inquired confidentially.

"Perfectly, thank you," answered Captain Chancellor, and the tone of the three words was unmistakable. So Major Thanet took his cue, and not being behind the rest of the world in his capability of "bearing perfectly like a Christian the misfortunes of another," resigned himself with a cigar, and a sigh over "Chancellor's infatuation," to the apparently inevitable, and being introduced to Eugenia a day or two after by her fiance, congratulated her with as much graceful fervour as if no piece of news of the kind had ever in his life afforded him such unmingled satisfaction.

Eugenia thought him charming, seeing him through the flattering medium of his position as one of Beauchamp's oldest friends, and was a very little surprised that the cordiality of her expressions regarding him hardly appeared as gratifying to her lover as she could have expected.

"Am I too outspoken, Beauchamp?" she ventured to inquire. "You don't think me `gushing,' I hope?" with a little smile, but some anxiety, and his answer, "Never to _me_," was scarcely reassuring.

"I will try to learn to be more dignified and--and more reserved, or whatever it is my manner is wanting in," she said, penitentially. And then the tiny cloud cleared off Beauchamp's face, and he told her she could never in _his_ eyes be nearer perfection than she was already, and all was sunshine again--sunshine almost too brilliant and dazzling, with a want of the steady glow about it which tells of the settled maturity of summer; reminding one rather of the flashing radiance of uncertain April "with his shoures," "April, when men woo"--sunshine, nevertheless, which brought back the roses to Eugenia's cheeks, and added new radiance to her beautiful eyes.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER SEVEN.

FAIT ACCOMPLI.

Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what's done is
done.

_Macbeth_.

And thus it came about that Eugenia returned home to Wareborough the week before her sister's marriage, a very picture of radiant happiness.

"How little we imagined what was to be the end of my visit to Nunswell! Do you remember how dreadfully unwilling I was to go?" she said to Sydney, when they were alone together for the first time the evening she came home.

And Sydney smiled back to her, and tried her best to be sympathising in joy as in sorrow, and Eugenia was too intensely happy to discover that there was any effort required on her sister's part, or that it was not entirely successful.

Contrary to the usual course of true love at the critical stage when fathers are applied to, and ways and means have to be considered, there occurred no difficulties threatening to overthrow Eugenia's new-found happiness; or rather perhaps, such as there were, were smoothed away by her friends' kindness. Her father, at all times indulgent in intention, had had his somewhat undemonstrative affection quickened into activity by his anxiety during her illness, and was too delighted to see the change in her to lay much stress on the fact of Captain Chancellor's very limited means. And Beauchamp on his side was somewhat agreeably disappointed by Mr Laurence's generosity.

"I am not a rich man," said Eugenia's father, "and now that my children are grown up I sometimes take blame to myself that I am not a richer, I might have been so perhaps, but though nearly all my life has been spent in this place where money-making is the great object, I never caught the fever," here he smiled, and Captain Chancellor wondered in his own mind what on earth any one could find of interest in Wareborough, setting aside "the great object" to which his future father-in-law alluded thus contemptuously. "I am not ambitious," continued Mr Laurence, "either for myself or my children," Beauchamp stared a little, "but I am very anxious to see them happy, and nothing but very grave objections would make me interfere with their wishes. I am perfectly satisfied with Sydney's choice, and, though of course I have had much less opportunity of knowing you than has been the case as regards Frank Thurston, I trust, I think I may say I believe, I shall feel the same with Eugenia's."

He looked at Captain Chancellor with a half-inquiry. The young man, though not feeling particularly flattered, bowed silently. But catching sight again of Mr Laurence's eyes, the sort of appeal, of wistful anxiety in their expression, came home to him and awoke his better nature. It was impossible to take offence at the plain speaking of so straightforward and single-minded a man as Eugenia's father, eccentric though he might be, so Beauchamp answered gently and respectfully--

"I hope with all my heart, my dear sir, that you will indeed feel so. I think I can answer for myself that I shall do my best, my very best, to make her happy."

He held out his hand to Mr Laurence as he spoke, as if in ratification of the treaty. The older man took it and shook it, after the manner of Englishmen in moments of strong feeling, vigorously. Then they both looked at each other again.

"He's by no means an unpresentable father-in-law, Wareborough-bred though he is," thought Beauchamp, feeling sufficiently pleased with himself to see other people in a rose-coloured light.

And "I do not wonder at Eugenia," was the reflection that passed through her father's mind.

For Beauchamp looked his very best just now. There was a kindly light in his blue eyes, which added greatly to their attractiveness, a slight air of deference had replaced his usual calm, somewhat supercilious self-possession; he looked altogether younger and brighter and heartier.

He felt rewarded for the amiability and tact (a quality on the possession of which he rather prided himself) he had shown, when Mr Laurence proceeded to touch upon practical matters. The sum he named as the yearly allowance he intended to settle on Eugenia exceeded Captain Chancellor's expectations, if indeed he may be said to have had any; for when habitually calculating, self-considering persons act upon impulse, throwing prudence to the winds, their recklessness is apt to exceed that of more impetuous natures--a certain mortification at having disregarded their accepted rule of conduct renders the remembrance of the inconsistency unpalatable; for the time being they bury all practical considerations out of sight. So Beauchamp was perfectly sincere, and Mr Laurence could see that he was so, when he exclaimed--

"You are very generous, very generous indeed. I had no idea of anything so liberal. Indeed, to tell the truth, I fear I gave little thought to this part of the matter at all," (for now that his rashness had not turned out so badly, after all, he began to be rather proud of it). "I suppose," with a smile, "I thought only of Eugenia herself. But of course--for _her_ sake--I don't hesitate to say I am very glad of what you tell me--very glad indeed."

And the interview ended with mutual satisfaction.

"Yes," thought Beauchamp, as he returned to the drawing-room, where Eugenia was awaiting the result of the tete-a-tete in "papa's study," not, it must be confessed, with any great amount of anxiety, for her faith in her father was great, her ignorance of money matters unlimited--"Yes," thought Captain Chancellor, "we shall be able to scrub on. After all of course it will be only what Gertrude calls `genteel starvation.' How she used to ring the changes on that for Roma's benefit! But Eugenia will have quite as much as _she_ would have had, and with much less expensive tastes. And in the old days, when I was determined to marry Roma, I used to make out it would not be so very bad. Of course there is the difference in other ways, position and connection and all that, to be taken into account, but after all--"

"After all" things looked well enough for him to respond very cheerfully to Eugenia's, eager inquiries, to add a few more drops of bliss to her already brimming-over cup, by his praises of her father's generosity.

As must be expected, however, in all human affairs, there came by-and-by tiny clouds to temper the brilliance of Eugenia's sky, slight pricks of disappointment to make themselves felt amidst the luxuriance and fragrance of the flowers she had grasped so eagerly. The first of these that she perceived was the want of cordiality in Gerald Thurston's manner when he, as he could not avoid, congratulated her on her engagement. She had looked forward with some eagerness to seeing him, had counted upon his sympathy, had even rehearsed a little girlish speech referring gratefully to his kindness to her in her trouble, her hope that he would extend his friendship to Beauchamp as well as continue it to herself. But when she met him, and heard his few formal words of good wishes, her pretty expressions died upon her lips; she felt herself blushing painfully, and demeaned herself--at least so she afterwards declared to Sydney--as if she had done something she was ashamed of and that he was reproaching her. And Sydney did not smooth her ruffled plumage. Eugenia's complete misapprehension of Gerald irritated her sometimes almost unreasonably, and just now the irritation was increased by pity for the new disappointment she imagined him to be enduring. So when Eugenia complained of Mr Thurston's "brusqueness" and coldness, Sydney answered stiffly and unsympathisingly that she thought it a pity Eugenia judged people so much by "mere outside manner."

"You have known Gerald long enough to know how good and true he is, and how interested in our happiness. I don't see that one's friends are obliged to go into ecstasies over the news of one's engagement. Marrying, in nine cases out of ten, is the death of all previous friendships and connections."

"But it should not be, it need not be," interposed Eugenia, eagerly. "It will not be so with me, you will see, Sydney," and had it been any other day in the world than the one it was--the eve of Sydney's marriage, the last, the very last of the sisterly life together in the old home--she would have felt inclined to reproach her for her want of faith, her commonplace axioms. As if marriages in general could furnish grounds for prophecy as to the probable influence of marriage on the wife of a Beauchamp Chancellor!

The next morning's post brought disappointment Number 2, in the shape of a letter from the hero himself.

He had left Wareborough a few days before, being obliged to report himself at Bridgenorth, but had done so with the promise of returning for Sydney's marriage. Between his future sister-in-law and himself there was no great congeniality; circumstances had from the outset of their acquaintance prejudiced her against him, and he, even had he known this to be the case, would hardly have thought it worth his while to try to win her liking. In his own mind he set her down as a nice little thing, well fitted to be a clergyman's wife, and "not bad looking;" and had he received the very undesirable "giftie" of seeing himself with Sydney's eyes, his astonishment at her presumption would have been extreme. He had agreed to make one of the wedding guests, therefore, out of no special regard for the bride, but because it seemed to be expected by Eugenia and the others; not being, to do him justice, of the aggressively cross-grained order of individuals who, when pleasing people or doing what seems expected of them comes in their way, are forthwith seized with a desire, at whatever inconvenience to themselves, to avoid the suspicion of amiability by taking another road. Nevertheless, when Beauchamp found himself prevented making one at the feast, he by no means took it greatly to heart or felt any inclination to "beat his breast" with chagrin. That he did not do so, which was pretty evident from the tone of his letter, was what added the sting to Eugenia's sharp disappointment; for that the obstacle in the way of his joining them was insurmountable there could be no doubt.

A more inexorable power than even the Ancient Mariner, with the "long grey beard and glittering eye," had forbidden the presence of Eugenia's lover at the wedding. He had intended leaving Bridgenorth late the previous evening, sleeping at an hotel in Wareborough, and presenting himself at Mr Laurence's house the following morning in time to see his beautiful Eugenia in her bridesmaid's bravery and to accompany the wedding party to the church. But two hours before he was to leave the barracks he received a letter which completely changed his plans. It was from his sister, in answer merely, he thought on first seeing the address, to the one he had sent her announcing his engagement to Miss Laurence. He had awaited it with some anxiety; he opened it with considerable misgiving. First of all he came upon a smaller envelope enclosed in the larger. The letter it contained proved, to his surprise, to be from Roma.

"My dear Beauchamp," it began--

"Gertrude has told me the news about you. I am surprised, and yet I am not. Miss Laurence is beautiful and clever and good. What more can I say in the way of congratulation? Perhaps even this much is more than you will care to receive from me, but we are very old friends, Beauchamp, and I am completely in earnest in saying I hope you will both be very happy. If Miss Laurence remembers me, or if you care to tell her who I am, will you tell her, too, that I shall look forward to knowing her, and to really `making friends,' if she will let me?-- Believe me,--

"Yours affectionately,--

"Roma Alice Eyrecourt."

It was a pleasant little letter to receive, pleasant in a special sense to Beauchamp, for it was evident to him that Roma had exerted herself-- her tact and discrimination--to render it so, and the reflection soothed his still sore feeling towards her. He felt, too, that she really meant what she said and expressed, and he was right in thinking so. Roma was very sincere in her good wishes.

"So this is the end of it," she had said to herself, after doing her best to pour oil on the waters of Mrs Eyrecourt's extreme disgust and unreasonable indignation. "Well, certainly, though I think it one of the most foolish marriages I ever heard of, which is saying a good deal; though I think them in every particular, except good looks, utterly unsuited to each other--and the chances are it will not take them long to find that out for themselves--yet I must say I never liked Beauchamp as much, or thought as well of him, as just now that he has done this most, foolish thing. And, though I am perfectly certain there is not the ghost of a chance that it will be so, I really do earnestly hope they may be happy."

Then another remembrance occurred to her--"That infatuatedly faithful Mr Thurston, how will he take this, poor man, I wonder?" she thought, smiling slightly as she recalled him, for it is a curious fact that women can never pity Corydon's woes--"He would love, and she would not," without laughing at him a little too, even though he be, apart from Phillida, by no means a ludicrous or contemptible personage.

Beauchamp smiled as he read Roma's sisterly little letter. Then, not without reluctance, he put it aside and took up Mrs Eyrecourt's. The first part was pretty much what he had expected, or at least feared. She began by saying that the news of his engagement had so completely taken her by surprise that she really did not know what to say--perhaps, as he had so entirely avoided consulting her in this most important step, the less she said the better--after which preamble, as might have been expected, she went on to say a great deal. She did not write unkindly or coldly, she was most careful in the few allusions she could not avoid making to his fiancee, to say nothing exaggerated or in bad taste--nothing which could arouse his masculine spirit of contradiction or defiance. Such _as_ it was, and judged "according to the lights" of the woman who had written it and the man to whom it was written, it was by no means a bad letter, hardly even a selfish or one-sided or "wholly worldly" production. The first vehemence of Gertrude's wrath had been expended on poor Roma, a convenient safety-valve, and, thanks to her sympathy and patience, had considerably subsided before Mrs Eyrecourt had arrived at pen and paper. So her brother was fain to confess "there was a good deal of truth in what Gertrude said," and he sighed quite pathetically as he came to this conclusion. Only, and he brightened up again at this, she had not yet seen Eugenia; no doubt once she did so it would be all right. Miss Laurence had but to show herself, and the victory would be achieved; she would find no resistance--it would be a case of simply "walking over the ground" of Mrs Eyrecourt's prejudices. For Gertrude was not a small woman in the sense of any petty jealousy of another's attractions. She was nearly as sensitive as Beauchamp himself to beauty, and upon this he determined to trade.

"I shall not attempt defending myself or the wisdom of what I have done," he reflected. "I shall say nothing at all but that she must wait till she sees Eugenia. Then if she takes a fancy to her she will make a pet of her, enjoy taking her out and all that sort of thing, and it will all be as smooth sailing as possible. Of course Eugenia will throw herself completely into my side of the house, and not bother about Wareborough. That is the beauty of marrying a girl who has seen nothing and is better than her surroundings."

So, sanguinely mused Captain Chancellor, and all the while there was news at the end of his sister's letter which had escaped his observation, news which was to alter the whole colour of his future, which, so far as regarded Mrs Eyrecourt's friendly feelings to Eugenia, could not possibly have come at a worse time. He thought he had read it all, but, taking it up again, he saw that there was a lengthy postscript, written hurriedly, and here and there almost illegibly.