from the worldly point of view it
was not good enough. Eugenie was born for a large sphere; it was her
father's duty to find it for her if he could.

Hence the French betrothal--the crowning point of a summer visit to
a French chateau where Eugenie had been the spoiled child of a party
containing some of the greatest names in France. It flattered both
Lord Findon's vanity and imagination to find himself brought into
connexion with historic families all the more attractive because
of that dignified alienation from affairs, imposed on them by their
common hatred of the Second Empire. Eugenie, too, had felt the romance
of the _milieu_; had invested her French suitor with all that her
own poetic youth could bring to his glorification; had gone to him a
timid, willing, and most innocent bride.

Ah, well! it did not do to think of the sequel. Perhaps the man was
mad, as Eugenie insisted; perhaps much was due to some obscure brain
effects of exposure and hardship during the siege of Paris--for the
war had followed close on their honeymoon. But, madness or wickedness,
it was all the same; Eugenie's life was ruined, and her father could
neither mend it nor avenge it.

For owing to some--in his eyes--quixotic tenderness of conscience on
Eugenie's part, she would not sue for her divorce. She believed that
Albert was not responsible--that he might return to her. And that
passionate spiritual life of hers, the ideas of which Lord Findon only
half understood, forbade her, it seemed, any step which would finally
bar the way of that return; unless Albert should himself ask her to
take it. But the Comte had never made a sign. Lord Findon could only
suppose that he found himself as free as he wished to be, that the
ladies he consorted with were equally devoid of scruples, and that he,
therefore, very naturally, preferred to avoid publicity.

So here was Eugenie, husbandless and childless at
eight-and-twenty--for the only child of the marriage had died within
a year of its birth; the heroine of an odious story which, if it had
never reached the law courts, was none the less perfectly well known
in society; and, in the eyes of those who loved her, one of the
bravest, saddest, noblest of women. Of course Welby had shared in the
immense effort of the family to comfort and console her. They had
been so eager to accept his help; he had given it with such tact and
self-effacement; and now, meanly, they must help Eugenie to dismiss
him! For