ver-refined, and was to him supreme distinction; to search for
pleasures for her, as a botanist hunts rare flowers; to save her from
the most trifling annoyance, if time and brains could do it;--these
things, for three years, had made the charm of Welby's life. And
Eugenie knew it--knew it with an affectionate gratitude that had
for long seemed both to her and to the world the last word of their
situation on both sides--a note, a tone, which could always be evoked
from it, touch or strike it where you would.

And now?

Through what subtle phases and developments had time led them to
this moment of change and consciousness?--representing in her, sharp
recoil, an instant girding of the will--and in him a new despair,
which was also a new docility, a readiness to content and tranquillise
her at any cost. As they stood thus, for these few seconds, amid the
shadows of the rich encumbered room, the picture of the weeks
and months they had just passed through flashed through both
minds--illuminated--thrown into true relation with surrounding and
irrevocable fact. Both trembled--she under the admonition of her own
higher life--he, because existence beside her could never again be as
sweet to him to-morrow as it had been yesterday.

She moved. The trance was broken.

'I do, indeed, want to talk to you,' she said, in her gentlest voice.
'We shan't have very long. Papa wants me in half an hour.'

She motioned to the seat beside her; and their talk began.

* * * * *

Lord Findon sat alone in his study on the ground-floor, balancing
a paper-knife on one finger, fidgeting with a newspaper of which he
never read a word, and otherwise beguiling the time until the sound of
Welby's step on the stairs should tell him that the interview upstairs
was over.

His mind was full of disagreeable thoughts. Eugenie was dearer to him
than any other human being, and Welby--his ward, the orphan child of
one of his oldest friends--had been from his boyhood almost a son of
the house. Eight years before, what more natural than that these two
should marry? Welby had been then deeply in love; Eugenie in her first
maiden bloom had been difficult to read, but a word from the father
she adored would probably have been enough to incline her towards
her lover, to transform and fire a friendship which was already more
romantic than she knew. But Lord Findon could not make up his mind to
it. Arthur was a dear fellow; but