Volume Three—Chapter One.

Volume Three—Chapter One.Roma’s Sentiments.And if thy wife and thou agreeBut ill, as like when short of victual.T. Carlyle,The Beetle.Il m’est impossible de ne point tous féliciter.Les Misérables.Captain Chancellor had been away more than a fortnight. During that time Eugenia had received several short notes from him, most of which contained pretty much the same information, that business matters at Halswood had proved more complicated than he had expected, that there was so much to arrange and settle he found it impossible to return to Winsley as quickly as he had intended, but that he trusted Eugenia was comfortable and happy with his sister; indeed he felt sure she would be so, and so on. There was never any allusion to the little scene which had occurred the morning he left, and from the tone of his letters it was so evident to Eugenia that long before the remembrance of it had ceased acutely to distress her, her husband had forgotten all about it, that she on her side refrained from mentioning it.“It will be best never to refer to it,” she thought to herself. “Only when Beauchamp returns I shall be doubly careful, so that he may see how anxious I am to please him even in trifles.”More than once it had happened that the same post which brought Eugenia a short note from her husband brought Mrs Eyrecourt a much lengthier epistle from him. This was the case one morning about this time. It was a dull, close day, and Eugenia, always sensitive to such influences, had been hoping earnestly while dressing that her letters might bring news of Beauchamp’s speedy return. The disappointment was great when she opened the thin letter addressed to her, dated this time from Bridgenorth, and found that another fortnight must pass before he could rejoin her.“I came on here yesterday,” he wrote, “having got through the most pressing part of the business at Halswood, and hoping to get my leave, which is up next week, extended at once, for my papers were sent in last week. But I find as I am here I must stay till the middle of the month, when I hope to get away for good.”“Another whole fortnight,” sighed Eugenia. “Oh dear, how I do wish Beauchamp had let me wait for him at home instead of here. It would have been so different. I could have seen Sydney every day.”The tears rose unbidden to her eyes at the thought of the contrast between such a state of things and her present position, but she checked them back quickly, as looking up she saw that Gertrude was watching her. She went on reading her letter, though she already knew its few words by heart, holding it so as to prevent her sister-in-law seeing how short it was.“You have a letter from Beauchamp, I suppose,” said Gertrude. “So have I—a tremendous one, isn’t it?” she fluttered half a dozen sheets through her fingers for Eugenia’s benefit. “I really can’t read it all till after breakfast. It is all about Halswood. I was anxious to know how he finds everything, and so Beauchamp has sent me all the details—the particulars of the whole, the rents of the great farms, how the entailedmoneyproperty is invested, and I don’t know all what, but all so interesting to me of course, knowing it so well. It isn’t exactlywomens’business certainly, but then I have had a good deal of business to look after in my time. The womenkind of men of property should be able to help their husbands and sons, you know.”She went on speaking as if Eugenia were an ordinary uninterested visitor, either really forgetting, or affecting to do so, that to the woman before her of all women in the world Beauchamp Chancellor’s interests must be the closest and dearest. The blood seemed to boil in the young wife’s veins, but recent experience had not been lost upon her, and her power of self-control had increased greatly in the last few weeks.So she answered, quietly, “Yes, they certainly should, and so should other people’s wives too. It is one of my father’s hobbies that women of all classes should be better educated, so that they may be better able to help men, and sometimes to work alone even.”“Oh, I wasn’t referring to that sort of thing. I hate all that talk about women’s rights, and so on: it is very bad taste,” exclaimed Gertrude, contemptuously. “I don’t know, and don’t want to know anything about the women of any class but my own. But of course there is nothing unfeminine in managing one’s own business matters when one understands how. I have almost been brought up to it, you see, always having lived on our own land—and I certainly need all I know now, with Quintin’s long minority before me and Beauchamp at the head of the Halswood affairs too. He is sure to be always consulting me. That reminds me I must be quick, for I must answer his letter before luncheon, and it will take me a good while.”She went on with her breakfast, but happening to move aside the large envelope of her brother’s letter, her eye fell on another, which, with a little exclamation, “From Roma, I didn’t expect to hear from her to-day,” she took up and read.“Roma is coming home to-morrow,” she announced to Eugenia, in a minute or two. “A week sooner than she expected.”“Is she really? I am so glad!” exclaimed Eugenia, thankful for any interruption to the present uncongenial tête-à-tête with her sister-in-law, doubly thankful that it came in the shape of a person she was already inclined to like.“Why, have you ever seen her? Oh yes, to be sure, she stayed a night at Wareborough and was at your marriage. I forgot you had seen her,” said Mrs Eyrecourt.“I saw more of her last winter,” said Eugenia, “at the time she stayed a week or so with Mrs Dalrymple—just when Beauchamp first came to Wareborough,”—“and I met him in the fog, and all the world was changed to me,” was the unspoken conclusion of her sentence.“Oh yes; I think I remember something about it,” said Gertrude, indifferently. “Dear me, was that only last winter? What changes in so short a time!”She sighed softly. Somehow the sigh was irritating to Eugenia; her instinct told her that the reflections accompanying it would not have been gratifying to her to hear. But she little guessed what they actually were. “If I had foreseen it all,” thought Gertrude, “I certainly would not have been so eager to prevent Beauchamp’s marrying Roma,” (for that this would have come to pass hadshechosen to encourage it, no power on earth, no protestations of the young lady herself, however earnest, could ever make Mrs Eyrecourt cease to believe): “it would have been far—oh, infinitely better thanthis! Though of course even now nothing could have been so perfectly suitable as Addie Chancellor,” and then poor Gertrude sighed.“I am very glad too Roma is coming,” she said, amiably, becoming conscious suddenly of the audibleness of her sigh, and feeling a little shocked at herself. “By-the-bye, Eugenia, she sends her love to you and hopes to find you still here.”“Thank you,” replied Eugenia, rather coldly. But in her heart she did feel very glad of the news. She hoped many things from Roma’s advent. Roma was kind and womanly and sensible. She had known Beauchamp all his life, and must understand him thoroughly.Heradvice Eugenia would not feel inclined to scorn. Roma could never be patronising; hers was by many degrees too large a nature for anything so small. And though clever mostly in a worldly sense perhaps—clever and satirical and dreadfullyau faitof everything—Eugenia did not feel in the least afraid of her. Though she had been everywhere and seen everything and knew everybody; though her education had reached far, in directions where Eugenia Laurence’s had never even begun, yet she was not conventional, not spoilt, not incapable of sympathy with the great human universe outside her own immediate sphere. Such at least was Eugenia’s ideal Roma—Roma with the bright dark eyes, ready words, and kindly smile.And Mrs Eyrecourt was very glad too. Roma would help her, she hoped, to entertain this pretty, uninteresting wife of Beauchamp’s, whom she found such heavy work; for Roma was great at this sort of task—she had quite a knack of getting stupid people to talk, discordant ones to agree, doing it too, with so much self-forgetfulness and tact, that the credit of this comfortable state of things usually fell to Gertrude’s own share.“Such a charming hostess! so unselfish and considerate for every one.”It was not much to be wondered at that so warm-hearted and unselfish a creature had not found the charge of her husband’s young sister a burdensome one. And as, even in this crooked life, goodness sometimes is recompensed, Gertrude Eyrecourt met with her reward. Everybody—hereverybody—praised her for her sisterly behaviour to homeless Roma; and Roma herself, whose capacity for gratitude was both wide and deep, thanked her constantly, though tacitly, by doing everything in her power to please her, resolutely refusing to see her smallnesses and selfishnesses, admiring her and respecting her judgment—and now and then too by determinedly disagreeing with her.Both Mrs Eyrecourt and her guests found their hopes fulfilled. Roma’s return improved the state of things immensely. She came home in great spirits, having enjoyed her visit far more than she had expected, yet declaring, and with evident sincerity, somewhat to Eugenia’s surprise, that she felt delighted to be at home again.“Who do you think was my travelling companion part of the way?” she said, when the three ladies were sitting together the first morning after her arrival. “He got in at Marley, and saw me into my train at the junction—he was going on to town. Do guess who it was—he is a friend of yours, Eugenia. Why, how stupid you both are! You are generally so quick at guessing, Gertrude.”“I!” exclaimed Mrs Eyrecourt, looking up, as if aware for the first time that Roma had been speaking to her. “I beg your pardon, I thought you said the unknown was a friend ofEugenia’s.”“Well, and if I did, is the world so big that by no conceivable chance two people living at opposite ends of the country could happen to have any mutual acquaintances?” said Roma. “To hear you speak, Gertrude, any one would think you had never been five miles from home. Like a nun I remember seeing when I was a child, in a convent in Switzerland, who thought, but wasn’t quite sure—the mere idea even of such an adventure seemed to overawe her—that when she was quite a little girl she had once been at Martigny, six miles from home. Why, Gertrude, I thought you prided yourself on being something of a cosmopolitan. Were you never at a place that long ago, when nobody but Miss Burney’s heroines ever went anywhere, used to be called Brighthelmstone, and did you never dine with certain friends of yours there, who never get new dresses unless they are guaranteed to be of the fashion of twenty years ago, dear old souls?”She spoke playfully, but there was a sharpness in her raillery which Mrs Eyrecourt did not love. She could not endure being laughed at, and she felt annoyed with Roma for making fun of any ofherfriends, be they never so funny, all of which Roma knew, and had dealt out her words accordingly, for she had not been half an hour at home before she knew exactly how the wind blew as regarded the young wife, and she was on the alert to show Gertrude she need not look to her for sympathy in her prejudice.But to Eugenia it was actual pain to witness the annoyance or discomfiture of another. A sort of instinct made her try to change the conversation.“Did you say that the Swiss nun had never in her life been anywhere?” she asked Roma. “Why had she been always in a convent? I never knew children could be sent to convents except as pupils.”“This girl was an orphan, and she had some money, and she had come to look on the convent as her home,” said Roma; “she wasn’t quite a lady; her father had been a rich farmer. I daresay she was happy enough, but it made a great impression on me as a child. It seemed so dreadful to be shut in between those four high walls when the world outside was so beautiful. I shouldn’t have pitied her half so much if the convent had been in an ugly place.”“I don’t know,” said Eugenia, with a dreamy look in her eyes; “I think it would be something to have the sky and mountains to look out at if one were miserable.”The expression of her face struck Roma with a slight pain. It was not thus she had looked on her wedding-day, even when blinded with the tears of her farewell. Through those tears Roma had been able to pronounce her “perfectly happy.”“Is it Gertrude’s fault, I wonder,” thought Roma, with quick indignation, “or can she be stirring already in her slumber? And only six weeks married.”But it was not Roma’s way to dwell on unpleasant suggestions. The meeting troubles half-way was an amusement which had never much recommended itself to her. So she answered brightly—“Miserable, why should we think about being miserable? But all this time you are forgetting my travelling companion. As you won’t guess who he was, I suppose I must tell you. It was Mr Thurston, your brother-in-law’s brother, Eugenia. The stranger, the new arrival from India, Gertrude, that we met at dinner at the Mountmorrises’.”“I was just thinking it must be he. He goes up and down that line so much. Did not you like him very much, Miss Eyrecourt? I do exceedingly. And he is so clever and thorough. The only thing not nice about him is, he is a little—funny—I don’t know what to call it.”“Funny? Do you mean humorous?” said Roma, looking at her with some amusement. “It did not strike me particularly.”“Oh no,” replied Eugenia. “I don’t mean that at all. I mean he is a little odd—uncertain. Sometimes he is so very much nicer than others. He gets queer fits of stiffness and reserve all of a sudden, and then one can make nothing of him. But oh,” she exclaimed, checking herself suddenly, “I shouldn’t criticise him in this way, for he has been so very good to me.”“I don’t think you have said anything very treasonable,” said Roma. “I can understand what you mean. He is a sensitive man—almost too much so. He looks as if he had had troubles too, though he is cheerful and practical enough. There is something about him unlike most of the men one meets—they are as a rule so very like each other, or else there is something about me which draws out the same sort of remarks from nearly every young man I meet.”“Really, Roma, I wish you would not talk such nonsense,” said Gertrude, rising as she spoke. “I do think you should be more careful in what you say. You are getting into a way of thinkingyoucan do or say what you like, which strikes me as the reverse of good taste. I confess I do not like your travelling all the way from Marley with a person of whom you know next to nothing. I hardly even remember meeting this Mr Thurston at the Mountmorrises’, and whether we did or not, that sort of introduction entails no more.”“But you forget that I said he was a connexion of Eugenia’s, Gertrude,” said Roma, quietly but very distinctly.Mrs Eyrecourt’s tone softened.“I did not notice what you said particularly,” she replied, as she left the room. “Of course Eugenia will know I did not intend to be so rude as to speak disparagingly of any of her friends.”Roma smiled. “All the same, Gertrude, like many other people,isrude when she is cross,” she remarked to Eugenia, for they were now by themselves. “Eugenia,” noticing the puzzled expression of her companion’s face, “why do you look so ‘funny?’ Are you shocked at me?”“No,” said Eugenia, “but I am not sure that I quite understand you.”“I am not worth much study, I assure you,” said Roma, contentedly. “You will understand all there is to understand very soon. Suppose we go out a little. By-the-bye, doesn’t that child trouble you? I saw her out there with you for such a time this morning.”“Floss,” said Eugenia, “trouble me? Oh no. I like her. I should have been very dull without her.”“So you have been dull? I was afraid of it. I saw the look on your face when I said how glad I was to be back at Winsley again.”“Oh dear! I wish I could keep looks from my face,” exclaimed Eugenia, pathetically. “Please forget about it. I should be so sorry to look as if I were not happy here. Beauchamp is so anxious that Mrs Eyrecourt and I should get on well. He is very fond of his sister, unusually so, isn’t he?”“So he should be,” replied Roma. “He owes her so much: so do I. She has been very good to us both.”“How?” asked Eugenia. “Of course I know she cares for Beauchamp, and—and takes great interest in him and all that, but still I don’t quite know how you mean.”Roma looked surprised. “Has Beauchamp never told you how Gertrude has all her life been almost like a mother to him?” she said. “And to me too,” she added. “I wonder he never told you.”“There has been so little time,” said Eugenia, hesitatingly; “but I wish you would tell me. I want to understand things better.”There were no secrets involved. Roma was ready enough to give Beauchamp’s wife a little sketch of the past. When it was finished Eugenia sighed.“Thank you,” she said. “I am glad to know it; I wish I had known it before. Perhaps it might have given me a different feeling to Mrs Eyrecourt, and I might have managed to make her like me. As it is, I fear she does not. Oh, Roma,” she went on, for the first time addressing Miss Eyrecourt by her Christian name—“oh, Roma, I wish I understood better. I am afraid I am not fit for the life before me. People seem to look at things so differently from what I fancied. I don’t always understand Beauchamp even. I vex him without in the least meaning it. You know him so well, do you think you could help me at all? I am so terribly, so miserably afraid of his coming to think he has made a mistake.”The large brown eyes looked up beseechingly into Roma’s; the piteous, troubled expression went straight to Roma’s heart.“You poor child!” she exclaimed impulsively, but checking herself quickly she went on in a different tone.“You must not be afraid. Things always seem strange and alarming at first. Try and take them more lightly and don’t be too easily daunted. Idoknow Beauchamp well, and I can assure you that, like many men, his bark is worse than his bite. You are more likely to annoy him by trying too much than too little to please him. He likes things to go on smoothly, and he can’t understand exaggerated feeling of any kind. I don’t think he is difficult to please, but he has got a certain set of ideas about women and wives—many men have, you know, but they modify in time. Only I suppose it is necessary to some extent toseemto agree with one’s husband whether one does thoroughly or not—just at first, you know, before people have got to understand each other quite well.”“I am afraid that sort of thing would be very difficult to me,” said Eugenia, sadly. “You see, I have always been accustomed to saying all I felt, to meeting sympathy wherever I wanted it. In some things I found it in my father; in others in my sister.”“You have been exceptionally happy,” said Roma.“Yes,” returned Eugenia, “I have indeed. We always see our happiness most clearly when we look back. I fear I have been too tenderly cared for. Perhaps,” with a faint laugh, “perhaps I am a little spoilt.” Roma smiled, but did not answer immediately. They were walking slowly up and down the terrace. Suddenly she turned to Eugenia with a question.“Do you dislike the idea of Halswood—of living there, I mean?”“Yes,” answered Eugenia, frankly, “I doverymuch. I dislike the whole of it—the being rich, and all that.”“Would you really rather Beauchamp had not succeeded to the property?” asked Roma again, with a glimmer of amusement in her dark eyes.“Farrather,” returned Eugenia, with much emphasis.“You extraordinary girl!” exclaimed Roma, now laughing outright; “whatwouldGertrude think if she heard you?”“Perhaps she wouldn’t believe me,” said Eugenia, sagely. “But it is quite, quite true. Still I would not say so to her. I hardly think I would say so to Beauchamp even. It is the sort of feeling that he could hardly—that very few people could enter into.”“Very few indeed, I should say,” replied Roma. “But, Eugenia, do you know I think you must try to get over the feeling. Solemnly, I assure you that I should have felt far more anxious about your future—yours and Beauchamp’s I mean—had he remained poor. You don’t know what it is. You don’t know how very few people can resist the deterioration of that struggling, pinching life.”“We should not have been so very badly off,” said Eugenia, far from convinced that she was mistaken.“Yes, you would,” persisted Roma; “for Beauchamp’s tastes are all those of a rich man. He is so fastidious, and as a bachelor he has been able to indulge his fastidiousness to a great extent. Oh no, no, you are quite mistaken, Eugenia! I assure you you should be very thankful you are rich. It takes—a very different man to Beauchamp to make a goodpoorhusband,” she had it on her lips to utter, but stopped in time. Eugenia did not notice the interruption. She seemed to be thinking deeply.“It seems to me so much more difficult than being poor,” she said. “But you must know some things much better than I. I will try to think it is best.”“Yes, do, it will give you a much better start,” said Roma, cheerfully. “And remember my advice, to take things lightly and not to be too sensitive. Not very lofty sentiments, are they? But there’s some sense in them. Everything seems to be compromise, after all. Nobody is quite good or quite bad, and most people and most lives are made up of a great many littles of both. That is the extent of the philosophy to which my four-and-twenty years’ experience has brought me?”“It is very sad,Ithink,” said Eugenia.“But it might be worse?” suggested Roma.Then they both laughed, and whether or no Roma’s philosophy much commended itself to her, Eugenia certainly went about with a lighter heart and brighter face than had been hers during the last few weeks.And the latter part of Mrs Chancellor’s visit to Winsley certainly proved a notable exception to the old proverb that “three are no company,” for the three ladies were very much better company than the two had been, and Eugenia no longer counted the days to her departure, and openly expressed her hopes that when Beauchamp returned, he would arrange to stay a little while: with his sister; which expression of cordial feeling naturally gratified Mrs Eyrecourt, and disposed her to regard her young sister-in-law in a more favourable light. Roma looked on and smiled, and enjoyed the present comfortable state of things, thinking to herself nevertheless that it was not on the whole to be regretted that the two counties respectively containing Halswood Hall and Winsley Grange were at a considerable distance from each other.Captain Chancellor came back a fortnight after Roma’s return, and a week later he took his wife to her new home. They did not travel thither by way of Wareborough, as Eugenia had hoped, but this disappointment she made up her mind to bear with philosophy. And Beauchamp, who had acted by his sister’s advice in the matter, appreciated his wife’s good behaviour to the extent of promising that once they were settled at Halswood, and had got the place into some sort of order, she should invite her father and Sydney and Frank to come to visit her in her own home. Eugenia mentioned this to Sydney in her next letter, but the smile with which the curate’s wife read the message was a rather sad one.“Dear Eugenia!” she said to himself; “I am afraid she is going to be far away from us—farther than she or any of us thought. But I trust she will not miss us.”

And if thy wife and thou agreeBut ill, as like when short of victual.T. Carlyle,The Beetle.Il m’est impossible de ne point tous féliciter.Les Misérables.

And if thy wife and thou agreeBut ill, as like when short of victual.T. Carlyle,The Beetle.Il m’est impossible de ne point tous féliciter.Les Misérables.

Captain Chancellor had been away more than a fortnight. During that time Eugenia had received several short notes from him, most of which contained pretty much the same information, that business matters at Halswood had proved more complicated than he had expected, that there was so much to arrange and settle he found it impossible to return to Winsley as quickly as he had intended, but that he trusted Eugenia was comfortable and happy with his sister; indeed he felt sure she would be so, and so on. There was never any allusion to the little scene which had occurred the morning he left, and from the tone of his letters it was so evident to Eugenia that long before the remembrance of it had ceased acutely to distress her, her husband had forgotten all about it, that she on her side refrained from mentioning it.

“It will be best never to refer to it,” she thought to herself. “Only when Beauchamp returns I shall be doubly careful, so that he may see how anxious I am to please him even in trifles.”

More than once it had happened that the same post which brought Eugenia a short note from her husband brought Mrs Eyrecourt a much lengthier epistle from him. This was the case one morning about this time. It was a dull, close day, and Eugenia, always sensitive to such influences, had been hoping earnestly while dressing that her letters might bring news of Beauchamp’s speedy return. The disappointment was great when she opened the thin letter addressed to her, dated this time from Bridgenorth, and found that another fortnight must pass before he could rejoin her.

“I came on here yesterday,” he wrote, “having got through the most pressing part of the business at Halswood, and hoping to get my leave, which is up next week, extended at once, for my papers were sent in last week. But I find as I am here I must stay till the middle of the month, when I hope to get away for good.”

“Another whole fortnight,” sighed Eugenia. “Oh dear, how I do wish Beauchamp had let me wait for him at home instead of here. It would have been so different. I could have seen Sydney every day.”

The tears rose unbidden to her eyes at the thought of the contrast between such a state of things and her present position, but she checked them back quickly, as looking up she saw that Gertrude was watching her. She went on reading her letter, though she already knew its few words by heart, holding it so as to prevent her sister-in-law seeing how short it was.

“You have a letter from Beauchamp, I suppose,” said Gertrude. “So have I—a tremendous one, isn’t it?” she fluttered half a dozen sheets through her fingers for Eugenia’s benefit. “I really can’t read it all till after breakfast. It is all about Halswood. I was anxious to know how he finds everything, and so Beauchamp has sent me all the details—the particulars of the whole, the rents of the great farms, how the entailedmoneyproperty is invested, and I don’t know all what, but all so interesting to me of course, knowing it so well. It isn’t exactlywomens’business certainly, but then I have had a good deal of business to look after in my time. The womenkind of men of property should be able to help their husbands and sons, you know.”

She went on speaking as if Eugenia were an ordinary uninterested visitor, either really forgetting, or affecting to do so, that to the woman before her of all women in the world Beauchamp Chancellor’s interests must be the closest and dearest. The blood seemed to boil in the young wife’s veins, but recent experience had not been lost upon her, and her power of self-control had increased greatly in the last few weeks.

So she answered, quietly, “Yes, they certainly should, and so should other people’s wives too. It is one of my father’s hobbies that women of all classes should be better educated, so that they may be better able to help men, and sometimes to work alone even.”

“Oh, I wasn’t referring to that sort of thing. I hate all that talk about women’s rights, and so on: it is very bad taste,” exclaimed Gertrude, contemptuously. “I don’t know, and don’t want to know anything about the women of any class but my own. But of course there is nothing unfeminine in managing one’s own business matters when one understands how. I have almost been brought up to it, you see, always having lived on our own land—and I certainly need all I know now, with Quintin’s long minority before me and Beauchamp at the head of the Halswood affairs too. He is sure to be always consulting me. That reminds me I must be quick, for I must answer his letter before luncheon, and it will take me a good while.”

She went on with her breakfast, but happening to move aside the large envelope of her brother’s letter, her eye fell on another, which, with a little exclamation, “From Roma, I didn’t expect to hear from her to-day,” she took up and read.

“Roma is coming home to-morrow,” she announced to Eugenia, in a minute or two. “A week sooner than she expected.”

“Is she really? I am so glad!” exclaimed Eugenia, thankful for any interruption to the present uncongenial tête-à-tête with her sister-in-law, doubly thankful that it came in the shape of a person she was already inclined to like.

“Why, have you ever seen her? Oh yes, to be sure, she stayed a night at Wareborough and was at your marriage. I forgot you had seen her,” said Mrs Eyrecourt.

“I saw more of her last winter,” said Eugenia, “at the time she stayed a week or so with Mrs Dalrymple—just when Beauchamp first came to Wareborough,”—“and I met him in the fog, and all the world was changed to me,” was the unspoken conclusion of her sentence.

“Oh yes; I think I remember something about it,” said Gertrude, indifferently. “Dear me, was that only last winter? What changes in so short a time!”

She sighed softly. Somehow the sigh was irritating to Eugenia; her instinct told her that the reflections accompanying it would not have been gratifying to her to hear. But she little guessed what they actually were. “If I had foreseen it all,” thought Gertrude, “I certainly would not have been so eager to prevent Beauchamp’s marrying Roma,” (for that this would have come to pass hadshechosen to encourage it, no power on earth, no protestations of the young lady herself, however earnest, could ever make Mrs Eyrecourt cease to believe): “it would have been far—oh, infinitely better thanthis! Though of course even now nothing could have been so perfectly suitable as Addie Chancellor,” and then poor Gertrude sighed.

“I am very glad too Roma is coming,” she said, amiably, becoming conscious suddenly of the audibleness of her sigh, and feeling a little shocked at herself. “By-the-bye, Eugenia, she sends her love to you and hopes to find you still here.”

“Thank you,” replied Eugenia, rather coldly. But in her heart she did feel very glad of the news. She hoped many things from Roma’s advent. Roma was kind and womanly and sensible. She had known Beauchamp all his life, and must understand him thoroughly.Heradvice Eugenia would not feel inclined to scorn. Roma could never be patronising; hers was by many degrees too large a nature for anything so small. And though clever mostly in a worldly sense perhaps—clever and satirical and dreadfullyau faitof everything—Eugenia did not feel in the least afraid of her. Though she had been everywhere and seen everything and knew everybody; though her education had reached far, in directions where Eugenia Laurence’s had never even begun, yet she was not conventional, not spoilt, not incapable of sympathy with the great human universe outside her own immediate sphere. Such at least was Eugenia’s ideal Roma—Roma with the bright dark eyes, ready words, and kindly smile.

And Mrs Eyrecourt was very glad too. Roma would help her, she hoped, to entertain this pretty, uninteresting wife of Beauchamp’s, whom she found such heavy work; for Roma was great at this sort of task—she had quite a knack of getting stupid people to talk, discordant ones to agree, doing it too, with so much self-forgetfulness and tact, that the credit of this comfortable state of things usually fell to Gertrude’s own share.

“Such a charming hostess! so unselfish and considerate for every one.”

It was not much to be wondered at that so warm-hearted and unselfish a creature had not found the charge of her husband’s young sister a burdensome one. And as, even in this crooked life, goodness sometimes is recompensed, Gertrude Eyrecourt met with her reward. Everybody—hereverybody—praised her for her sisterly behaviour to homeless Roma; and Roma herself, whose capacity for gratitude was both wide and deep, thanked her constantly, though tacitly, by doing everything in her power to please her, resolutely refusing to see her smallnesses and selfishnesses, admiring her and respecting her judgment—and now and then too by determinedly disagreeing with her.

Both Mrs Eyrecourt and her guests found their hopes fulfilled. Roma’s return improved the state of things immensely. She came home in great spirits, having enjoyed her visit far more than she had expected, yet declaring, and with evident sincerity, somewhat to Eugenia’s surprise, that she felt delighted to be at home again.

“Who do you think was my travelling companion part of the way?” she said, when the three ladies were sitting together the first morning after her arrival. “He got in at Marley, and saw me into my train at the junction—he was going on to town. Do guess who it was—he is a friend of yours, Eugenia. Why, how stupid you both are! You are generally so quick at guessing, Gertrude.”

“I!” exclaimed Mrs Eyrecourt, looking up, as if aware for the first time that Roma had been speaking to her. “I beg your pardon, I thought you said the unknown was a friend ofEugenia’s.”

“Well, and if I did, is the world so big that by no conceivable chance two people living at opposite ends of the country could happen to have any mutual acquaintances?” said Roma. “To hear you speak, Gertrude, any one would think you had never been five miles from home. Like a nun I remember seeing when I was a child, in a convent in Switzerland, who thought, but wasn’t quite sure—the mere idea even of such an adventure seemed to overawe her—that when she was quite a little girl she had once been at Martigny, six miles from home. Why, Gertrude, I thought you prided yourself on being something of a cosmopolitan. Were you never at a place that long ago, when nobody but Miss Burney’s heroines ever went anywhere, used to be called Brighthelmstone, and did you never dine with certain friends of yours there, who never get new dresses unless they are guaranteed to be of the fashion of twenty years ago, dear old souls?”

She spoke playfully, but there was a sharpness in her raillery which Mrs Eyrecourt did not love. She could not endure being laughed at, and she felt annoyed with Roma for making fun of any ofherfriends, be they never so funny, all of which Roma knew, and had dealt out her words accordingly, for she had not been half an hour at home before she knew exactly how the wind blew as regarded the young wife, and she was on the alert to show Gertrude she need not look to her for sympathy in her prejudice.

But to Eugenia it was actual pain to witness the annoyance or discomfiture of another. A sort of instinct made her try to change the conversation.

“Did you say that the Swiss nun had never in her life been anywhere?” she asked Roma. “Why had she been always in a convent? I never knew children could be sent to convents except as pupils.”

“This girl was an orphan, and she had some money, and she had come to look on the convent as her home,” said Roma; “she wasn’t quite a lady; her father had been a rich farmer. I daresay she was happy enough, but it made a great impression on me as a child. It seemed so dreadful to be shut in between those four high walls when the world outside was so beautiful. I shouldn’t have pitied her half so much if the convent had been in an ugly place.”

“I don’t know,” said Eugenia, with a dreamy look in her eyes; “I think it would be something to have the sky and mountains to look out at if one were miserable.”

The expression of her face struck Roma with a slight pain. It was not thus she had looked on her wedding-day, even when blinded with the tears of her farewell. Through those tears Roma had been able to pronounce her “perfectly happy.”

“Is it Gertrude’s fault, I wonder,” thought Roma, with quick indignation, “or can she be stirring already in her slumber? And only six weeks married.”

But it was not Roma’s way to dwell on unpleasant suggestions. The meeting troubles half-way was an amusement which had never much recommended itself to her. So she answered brightly—

“Miserable, why should we think about being miserable? But all this time you are forgetting my travelling companion. As you won’t guess who he was, I suppose I must tell you. It was Mr Thurston, your brother-in-law’s brother, Eugenia. The stranger, the new arrival from India, Gertrude, that we met at dinner at the Mountmorrises’.”

“I was just thinking it must be he. He goes up and down that line so much. Did not you like him very much, Miss Eyrecourt? I do exceedingly. And he is so clever and thorough. The only thing not nice about him is, he is a little—funny—I don’t know what to call it.”

“Funny? Do you mean humorous?” said Roma, looking at her with some amusement. “It did not strike me particularly.”

“Oh no,” replied Eugenia. “I don’t mean that at all. I mean he is a little odd—uncertain. Sometimes he is so very much nicer than others. He gets queer fits of stiffness and reserve all of a sudden, and then one can make nothing of him. But oh,” she exclaimed, checking herself suddenly, “I shouldn’t criticise him in this way, for he has been so very good to me.”

“I don’t think you have said anything very treasonable,” said Roma. “I can understand what you mean. He is a sensitive man—almost too much so. He looks as if he had had troubles too, though he is cheerful and practical enough. There is something about him unlike most of the men one meets—they are as a rule so very like each other, or else there is something about me which draws out the same sort of remarks from nearly every young man I meet.”

“Really, Roma, I wish you would not talk such nonsense,” said Gertrude, rising as she spoke. “I do think you should be more careful in what you say. You are getting into a way of thinkingyoucan do or say what you like, which strikes me as the reverse of good taste. I confess I do not like your travelling all the way from Marley with a person of whom you know next to nothing. I hardly even remember meeting this Mr Thurston at the Mountmorrises’, and whether we did or not, that sort of introduction entails no more.”

“But you forget that I said he was a connexion of Eugenia’s, Gertrude,” said Roma, quietly but very distinctly.

Mrs Eyrecourt’s tone softened.

“I did not notice what you said particularly,” she replied, as she left the room. “Of course Eugenia will know I did not intend to be so rude as to speak disparagingly of any of her friends.”

Roma smiled. “All the same, Gertrude, like many other people,isrude when she is cross,” she remarked to Eugenia, for they were now by themselves. “Eugenia,” noticing the puzzled expression of her companion’s face, “why do you look so ‘funny?’ Are you shocked at me?”

“No,” said Eugenia, “but I am not sure that I quite understand you.”

“I am not worth much study, I assure you,” said Roma, contentedly. “You will understand all there is to understand very soon. Suppose we go out a little. By-the-bye, doesn’t that child trouble you? I saw her out there with you for such a time this morning.”

“Floss,” said Eugenia, “trouble me? Oh no. I like her. I should have been very dull without her.”

“So you have been dull? I was afraid of it. I saw the look on your face when I said how glad I was to be back at Winsley again.”

“Oh dear! I wish I could keep looks from my face,” exclaimed Eugenia, pathetically. “Please forget about it. I should be so sorry to look as if I were not happy here. Beauchamp is so anxious that Mrs Eyrecourt and I should get on well. He is very fond of his sister, unusually so, isn’t he?”

“So he should be,” replied Roma. “He owes her so much: so do I. She has been very good to us both.”

“How?” asked Eugenia. “Of course I know she cares for Beauchamp, and—and takes great interest in him and all that, but still I don’t quite know how you mean.”

Roma looked surprised. “Has Beauchamp never told you how Gertrude has all her life been almost like a mother to him?” she said. “And to me too,” she added. “I wonder he never told you.”

“There has been so little time,” said Eugenia, hesitatingly; “but I wish you would tell me. I want to understand things better.”

There were no secrets involved. Roma was ready enough to give Beauchamp’s wife a little sketch of the past. When it was finished Eugenia sighed.

“Thank you,” she said. “I am glad to know it; I wish I had known it before. Perhaps it might have given me a different feeling to Mrs Eyrecourt, and I might have managed to make her like me. As it is, I fear she does not. Oh, Roma,” she went on, for the first time addressing Miss Eyrecourt by her Christian name—“oh, Roma, I wish I understood better. I am afraid I am not fit for the life before me. People seem to look at things so differently from what I fancied. I don’t always understand Beauchamp even. I vex him without in the least meaning it. You know him so well, do you think you could help me at all? I am so terribly, so miserably afraid of his coming to think he has made a mistake.”

The large brown eyes looked up beseechingly into Roma’s; the piteous, troubled expression went straight to Roma’s heart.

“You poor child!” she exclaimed impulsively, but checking herself quickly she went on in a different tone.

“You must not be afraid. Things always seem strange and alarming at first. Try and take them more lightly and don’t be too easily daunted. Idoknow Beauchamp well, and I can assure you that, like many men, his bark is worse than his bite. You are more likely to annoy him by trying too much than too little to please him. He likes things to go on smoothly, and he can’t understand exaggerated feeling of any kind. I don’t think he is difficult to please, but he has got a certain set of ideas about women and wives—many men have, you know, but they modify in time. Only I suppose it is necessary to some extent toseemto agree with one’s husband whether one does thoroughly or not—just at first, you know, before people have got to understand each other quite well.”

“I am afraid that sort of thing would be very difficult to me,” said Eugenia, sadly. “You see, I have always been accustomed to saying all I felt, to meeting sympathy wherever I wanted it. In some things I found it in my father; in others in my sister.”

“You have been exceptionally happy,” said Roma.

“Yes,” returned Eugenia, “I have indeed. We always see our happiness most clearly when we look back. I fear I have been too tenderly cared for. Perhaps,” with a faint laugh, “perhaps I am a little spoilt.” Roma smiled, but did not answer immediately. They were walking slowly up and down the terrace. Suddenly she turned to Eugenia with a question.

“Do you dislike the idea of Halswood—of living there, I mean?”

“Yes,” answered Eugenia, frankly, “I doverymuch. I dislike the whole of it—the being rich, and all that.”

“Would you really rather Beauchamp had not succeeded to the property?” asked Roma again, with a glimmer of amusement in her dark eyes.

“Farrather,” returned Eugenia, with much emphasis.

“You extraordinary girl!” exclaimed Roma, now laughing outright; “whatwouldGertrude think if she heard you?”

“Perhaps she wouldn’t believe me,” said Eugenia, sagely. “But it is quite, quite true. Still I would not say so to her. I hardly think I would say so to Beauchamp even. It is the sort of feeling that he could hardly—that very few people could enter into.”

“Very few indeed, I should say,” replied Roma. “But, Eugenia, do you know I think you must try to get over the feeling. Solemnly, I assure you that I should have felt far more anxious about your future—yours and Beauchamp’s I mean—had he remained poor. You don’t know what it is. You don’t know how very few people can resist the deterioration of that struggling, pinching life.”

“We should not have been so very badly off,” said Eugenia, far from convinced that she was mistaken.

“Yes, you would,” persisted Roma; “for Beauchamp’s tastes are all those of a rich man. He is so fastidious, and as a bachelor he has been able to indulge his fastidiousness to a great extent. Oh no, no, you are quite mistaken, Eugenia! I assure you you should be very thankful you are rich. It takes—a very different man to Beauchamp to make a goodpoorhusband,” she had it on her lips to utter, but stopped in time. Eugenia did not notice the interruption. She seemed to be thinking deeply.

“It seems to me so much more difficult than being poor,” she said. “But you must know some things much better than I. I will try to think it is best.”

“Yes, do, it will give you a much better start,” said Roma, cheerfully. “And remember my advice, to take things lightly and not to be too sensitive. Not very lofty sentiments, are they? But there’s some sense in them. Everything seems to be compromise, after all. Nobody is quite good or quite bad, and most people and most lives are made up of a great many littles of both. That is the extent of the philosophy to which my four-and-twenty years’ experience has brought me?”

“It is very sad,Ithink,” said Eugenia.

“But it might be worse?” suggested Roma.

Then they both laughed, and whether or no Roma’s philosophy much commended itself to her, Eugenia certainly went about with a lighter heart and brighter face than had been hers during the last few weeks.

And the latter part of Mrs Chancellor’s visit to Winsley certainly proved a notable exception to the old proverb that “three are no company,” for the three ladies were very much better company than the two had been, and Eugenia no longer counted the days to her departure, and openly expressed her hopes that when Beauchamp returned, he would arrange to stay a little while: with his sister; which expression of cordial feeling naturally gratified Mrs Eyrecourt, and disposed her to regard her young sister-in-law in a more favourable light. Roma looked on and smiled, and enjoyed the present comfortable state of things, thinking to herself nevertheless that it was not on the whole to be regretted that the two counties respectively containing Halswood Hall and Winsley Grange were at a considerable distance from each other.

Captain Chancellor came back a fortnight after Roma’s return, and a week later he took his wife to her new home. They did not travel thither by way of Wareborough, as Eugenia had hoped, but this disappointment she made up her mind to bear with philosophy. And Beauchamp, who had acted by his sister’s advice in the matter, appreciated his wife’s good behaviour to the extent of promising that once they were settled at Halswood, and had got the place into some sort of order, she should invite her father and Sydney and Frank to come to visit her in her own home. Eugenia mentioned this to Sydney in her next letter, but the smile with which the curate’s wife read the message was a rather sad one.

“Dear Eugenia!” she said to himself; “I am afraid she is going to be far away from us—farther than she or any of us thought. But I trust she will not miss us.”

Volume Three—Chapter Two.Home.And sometimes I am hopeful as the spring,And up my fluttering heart is borne aloft,As high and gladsome as the lark at sunrise;And then, as though the fowler’s shaft had pierced it,It comes plumb down, with such a dead, dead fall.Philip Van Artevelde.It was late in the evening of an August day when Captain Chancellor and his wife reached Halswood. Beauchamp had been anxious to complete the journey at once without any halts by the way, but to do this it had been necessary to leave Winsley very early in the morning, in consequence of which Eugenia was very tired. A certain excitement had kept her up during the first part of the journey, an excitement arising from mingled causes, but of which the anticipation of the glories of Halswood about to be revealed to her was a much less considerable one than would have been generally credited. Till they had passed Marley Junction, the ugly familiar station where everybody coming south from or going north to Wareborough and Bridgenorth always changed carriages, Eugenia had not been without a childish hope that she might catch sight of some home face; Frank perhaps, or more probably his brother, or not impossibly her father even. A sort of warm thrill of pleasure passed through her at the thought; it was more than two months since she had seen arty one of the friends among whom her nineteen years of girlhood had been passed, and before her marriage she had never been away from her father’s house for more than a fortnight—some amount of home-sickness was surely to be excused. All the way to Marley she felt as if she were going home in reality; the sight of a tall chimney, the dirty smoke-begrimed red of the streets of brick houses of the first little manufacturing town through which they passed made the tears come into her eyes. Her husband noticed their dewy appearance and remonstrated with her on the folly of sitting close beside the window, “with that abominable smoke and filthy smuts flying in.” He got up and shut the window, remarking as he did so that railway lines to civilised places should really not be cut through these atrocious manufacturing districts; he trusted nothing would ever necessitate his entering Wareborough or Bridgenorth or any of these Wareshire towns again.Eugenia said nothing, and changed her seat to the opposite side of the carriage as she was bidden. She had felt no temptation to confide to her husband the real cause of the emotion he had not even imagined to be such, but her eyes did not immediately recover themselves, and Marley once left behind, her spirits fell. Every mile of the unfamiliar country through which their journey now lay seemed to increase her painful sense of loneliness and strangeness.“Oh,” thought she, as they at last reached Chilworth, the nearest point to Halswood. “Oh, if only this were Bridgenorth, and we were going to the little house, or even to the lodgings we used to talk of living in there, and Sydney perhaps waiting to welcome us.”The tears got the length of dropping this time. She made no effort to conceal them, for by now it was too dark for her husband to see her face.No sensation of any kind was perceptible at the little station on their arrival. Under the circumstances, of course any demonstration of rejoicing at the home-coming of the new lord of the greater part of the adjacent soil would have been the extreme of bad taste, and there was nothing by which a stranger could have guessed that the lady and gentleman who got out of the train and quietly passed through the station-gate to the carriage waiting outside were persons of more than ordinary local importance, save perhaps a certain extra obsequiousness on the part of the very unofficial-looking station-master, and a somewhat greater than usual readiness to bestir himself on the part of the solitary porter. Mrs Chancellor, however, was far too self-absorbed to notice anything of the kind; it had never occurred to her to think of herself and her husband as objects of interest or curiosity to the outside world, and had the joy bells been ringing and bonfires blazing she would probably have turned to her companion with an inquiry as to the cause.There was a momentary delay as she was getting into the carriage—Captain Chancellor turned back to give some additional instruction respecting the luggage. Eugenia standing waiting could not fail to notice that the brougham was a new one, and that everything about it, including the deep mourning livery of the men-servants, was perfectly well-appointed.“What a nice carriage this is, Beauchamp,” she said, when the door was shut, and they were rolling smoothly and swiftly away.“Yes,” he replied, not ill-pleased by her admiration; “I wrote for it when I first came down here. There was nothing fit for use. Herbert Chancellor never brought any carriages down here—not of course that they would have been mine if he had. Yes, it is a first-rate little brougham. Did you notice the horses? Oh no, by-the-bye it was too dark.”“I did not notice them. The lamps lighted up the carriage, and drew my attention to it. The horses were more in the shade. Not that I should venture to give an opinion on them. You know how dreadfully ignorant I am of such things.”“You will soon pick up quite as much knowledge of the kind as you need. I loathe and detest ‘horsy’ women. Roma even, if she were any one but herself, I should say had a shade too much of that sort of thing. But on the other hand, of course, it doesn’t do to be in a state of utter ignorance about such matters.”“No, oh no,” said Eugenia. “I quite know how you mean. I want to understand a little more about a good many things that I have not come in the way of hitherto.”Beauchamp’s tone had been pleasant and encouraging. Eugenia’s impressionable spirits began to rise. If she could but be sure of always pleasing her husband! If she could but feel that in all difficulties, great and small, she might appeal to him, certain of sympathy, certain of encouragement! It might come to be so—married life she had often heard, was not to be tested by the outset. Circumstances so far had certainly been somewhat against her. It might be that this coming to Halswood, so dreaded by her, was to be the beginning of the life of perfect union, of complete mutual comprehension which she had dreamt of.A glow of new hopefulness seemed to creep through her at the thought—from very intensity of feeling she remained silent, wishing that she could find words in which to express to her husband a tithe of the yearning devotion, the ardent resolutions ready at his slightest bidding to spring into life. In a minute or two he spoke again.“Are you tired, Eugenia?” he said. “What makes you so silent?”There was a slight impatience in his tone. He wanted her to be bright and eager, and delighted with everything. He had by now almost got over his fear of “undue or underbred elation” at her good fortune, on his wife’s part, and when alone with him some amount of demonstrative appreciation of what through him had fallen to her share, would not have been objectionable. But, as was usual with her, when carried away by strong feeling of her own, Eugenia perceived nothing of the restrained irritation in Beauchamp’s voice.“Tired,” she said, with a little start, “oh, no; at least I may be a little tired, but it isn’t that that made me silent. I was only thinking.”Her voice quivered a little. A sudden fear of hysterics came over Captain Chancellor. Some women always got hysterics when they were tired, and Eugenia was so absurdly excitable. A word or a look at any moment would make her cry.“Thinking,” he said, half rallyingly, half impatiently; “what about? Nothing unpleasant, I hope? though there certainly is no counting on women’s caprices.”“I can’t possibly tell youallI was thinking,” she began, still speaking tremulously. “I was thinking how I do hope we shall be happy together in this new life, how I trust you will be pleased with me always, how I hope you will let me come to you with my little difficulties and anxieties, and—and that we may be at one always in everything, and not grow apart from each other. Oh, I can’t half say what I feel. I think—I think, I sympathise a little with the wife in the ‘Lord of Burleigh,’ I feel frightened and ignorant, and a little lonely. But oh, Beauchamp, if you will help me—don’t you remember that beautiful line—“And he cheered her soul with love.“If we always keep close together, I shall not regret anything.”By this time she was in tears. Beauchamp was no great reader of poetry. He “got up” what was wanted for drawing-room small talk, and that was about all. But, as it happened, he knew the poem—the story of it, at least, to which she alluded, and had more than once made great fun of it.“Catch any woman of the lower classes being such a fool. Founded on fact, not a bit of it. She died of consumption, you may be sure,” was the opinion he had expressed.So, being a little “put out” to begin with, and by no means in the humour for a sentimental scene—tears, and all the rest of it—Eugenia’s somewhat incoherent speech, the allusion at the end of it especially, met with by no means a tender or sympathising reception.“Really, Eugenia,” he began, and at the sound of the two words all the new hopefulness, the revived tenderness, the warmth died in the girlish wife’s heart—a cold, dull ache of disappointment, relieved but by the more acute stings of mortification and wounded feeling, setting in, the same instant, in their stead. “Really, Eugenia, you choose very odd times for your fits of—I really don’t know what to call it—exaggerated sentiment, as you object to ‘gushingness.’ We haven’t been quarrelling that I know of, and I have no intention of doing so. What you mean by talking of ‘not regretting’ anything, I don’t know in the least. I hate maudlin sentiment, and that poetry you are so fond of stuffs your head with it. For goodness’ sake, try to be comfortable, and let me be so. No one expects impossibilities of you—you talk as if I were an unreasonable tyrant. If anything could ‘drive us apart,’ as you call it, it would be this sort of nonsense, and these everlasting tears.”He had paused once or twice in this speech, but Eugenia remained perfectly silent, and this irritated him into saying more than he intended, more than he actually felt, and the consciousness of the harshness of his own words irritated him still further. Still Eugenia did not speak. He let down the carriage window on his side impatiently, thrust his head out into the darkness, then drew it in, and jerked up the glass again. Eugenia did not move—he glanced at her. The tears he had complained of had disappeared as if by magic; her face, in the uncertain light of the carriage lamps, looked unnaturally white and set, the mouth compressed, the eyes gazing straight before them. It was really too bad of her to behave so absurdly, thought Beauchamp, feeling himself not a little aggrieved. Still, he wished he had not spoken quite so strongly.“Eugenia,” he began again, “do try to be reasonable. You take up everything so exaggeratedly. You know perfectly well I have no wish to hurt you. But really it is not easy to avoid doing so. Living with you is like treading on egg-shells.”Then she turned towards him with a look in her eyes which he had never seen in them before—a look which the sweet wistful eyes of Eugenia Laurence had never known, a look which should have made her husband consider what he was doing, what he had done.“It is a terrible pity you did not find out my real character before,” she said, “before it was too late. As it is too late, however, no doubt the best thing you can do is to tell me plainly how I can make myself the least disagreeable to you. You shall be troubled by no more ‘maudlin sentiment,’ or tears. So much I can promise you.” Then she became perfectly silent again. Captain Chancellor gave a little laugh.“I am glad to hear it,” he said, with a slight sneer. “And, by Jove! what a temper she has after all,” he thought to himself. “They are all alike, I suppose, all the world over. They all want a tight hand. But I flatter myself I know how to break them in.” Then he hummed a tune, drew out his watch and looked what o’clock it was, fidgeted with the window again, all with an air of perfect indifference, which he imagined to be his actual state of mind. But far down in his heart there was a little ache of self-reproach and uneasiness. Had Eugenia turned to him now with tearful eyes and broken words, little as he might have understood her feelings, he would certainly not have repulsed her.Just at this moment the carriage turned in at the Halswood lodge. There was an instant’s stoppage, while the heavy iron gates were opened, then they went on again, even more swiftly and smoothly than before.“We are only a quarter of a mile from the house now,” said Captain Chancellor. “You should see the lights from your side.”“Oh, indeed,” said Eugenia, indifferently, turning her eyes listlessly in the direction in which he pointed, thinking that she would not care if an earthquake were suddenly to swallow up Halswood and everything connected with it, herself included; yet determined to hide all feeling—to appear as unconcerned as Beauchamp himself. “Ah, yes, I see them over there. I hope they will have fires,” with a little shiver.“Fires?” repeated Beauchamp. “After such a hot day. Why, it is oppressive still. You can’t be cold, surely?”“Yes, I am,” she said, “very;” and as she spoke, the carriage drew up under the pillared portico, which Captain Chancellor had pronounced so desperately ugly the first time he came to Halswood, and in another moment Eugenia’s feet had crossed the threshold of what was now her home.Three or four servants were waiting in the hall. At first sight Mrs Chancellor imagined them to be all strangers to her, but in another moment, to her delight, she recognised in the face of a young girl standing modestly somewhat in the rear of the others, the familiar features of Barbara’s niece. Mrs Eyrecourt had not succeeded in her design of substituting a more experienced lady’s maid in the place of Eugenia’s protégée. Something had been said about it, but in the pressure of more important arrangements Captain Chancellor had allowed the matter to stand over for the present, and it had been arranged that Rachel should be sent to Halswood the day before her mistress’s arrival, but in the absorption of her own thoughts Eugenia had for the time forgotten this, and the pleasure of the surprise was great.“Oh, Rachel!” she exclaimed with effusion, darting forward and shaking hands eagerly with the young girl—“I am so pleased to see you. Did you come yesterday, and how did you leave them all? How is papa? And Miss Sydney—Mrs Thurston, I mean?”“They are both very well, indeed, ma’am,” said the girl, flushing with pleasure at the friendly greeting—her spirits had been somewhat depressed since her arrival; the great, empty house, the few servants, all middle-aged or old, had seemed strange and cold to Barbara’s niece; “I went to see Mrs Thurston the last thing the night before I left—there is a letter waiting for you from her upstairs that she told me to put in your room—and Mr Laurence, ma’am, he wished me to—”“Eugenia,” said Captain Chancellor’s voice from behind his wife, “Eugenia, if you are notveryparticularly occupied, will you spare me a moment?”She had vexed him again, but in the softening influence of the home news, the sound of the dear home names, Eugenia’s better self was again uppermost. There was no resentment or haughtiness in her tone or manner as she turned quickly towards her husband.“Oh, I am so sorry,” she exclaimed; “I was so pleased to see Rachel and hear about them all at home, that!” But she said no more, for glancing at Beauchamp, she saw that her words had deepened rather than lightened the look of annoyance on his face.“Mrs Grier,” he said, addressing an elderly person in black silk, tall, thin, stiff, and yet depressed-looking, who came forward as she heard her name. “Eugenia, this is Mrs Grier. Mrs Grier has been at Halswood for I don’t know how many years. How many is it?” turning to the housekeeper with the pleasant smile that so lighted up his somewhat impassive face.“Thirty-three, sir,” replied Mrs Grier, thawing a little, “and more changes in the three than in all the thirty.”“Yes, indeed,” said Eugenia, kindly, shaking hands with the melancholy housekeeper. “You must have had a great deal to go through lately.”“I have, indeed, ma’am. Three funerals in a year, and all three the masters of the house,” answered Mrs Grier, shaking her head solemnly. “It isn’t often things happen so in a family. But all the same, ma’am, I wish you joy, you and my master, ma’am.”“Thank you,” said the two thus cheerfully addressed.Eugenia felt almost inclined to laugh; but Captain Chancellor hardly relished the peculiar style of Mrs Grier’s congratulation.“It’s time the luck should turn again now,” he said lightly. “Three is the correct number for that sort of thing, isn’t it?” Mrs Grier seemed struck by the remark.“There may be something in that, sir,” she allowed.Then one or two others of the head servants, who, having endured the twenty-five years of semi-starvation of the old Squire’s rule, had come to be looked upon as fixtures in the place, were in turn introduced by name to Mrs Chancellor.“Some of the new servants are to be here to-morrow,” said Mrs Grier, to Captain Chancellor. “I hope you will find everything comfortable in the meantime, sir.”Dinner—or, more properly speaking, supper—was prepared for the travellers in the dining-room—a huge, dark cavern of a room it looked to Eugenia, who shivered as the fireless grate met her view. She was too tired to eat; but, afraid of annoying her husband, she made a pretence of doing so, feeling eager for Sydney’s letter, and a chat with Rachel about “home,” in her own room.These pleasures were deferred for a little by the appearance of Mrs Grier to do the honour of showing her lady her rooms. The housekeeper had rather taken a fancy to Mrs Chancellor. Eugenia’s allusion to what she “must have had to go through,” had been a most lucky one, for Mrs Grier was one of those curiously constituted beings to whom condolence never comes amiss. The most delicate flattery was less acceptable to her than a sympathising remark that she was “looking far from well,” and no one could pay her a higher compliment than by telling her she bore traces of having known a great deal of trouble. She was not, for her class, an uneducated person; but she was constitutionally superstitious. Omens, dreams, deathbeds, funerals, all things ghastly and ghostly, were dear to her soul; and her thirty-three years’ life in a gloomy, half-deserted house, such as Halswood had been under the oldrégime, had not conduced to a healthier tone of mind.“Along this way, if you please, ma’am,” she said to Eugenia, pointing to the long corridor which ran to the right of the great staircase they had come up by. “The rooms to the left have not been occupied for many years. We thought—that is, Mr Blinkhorn and I—that you would prefer to use the rooms which have been the best family-rooms for some generations. It would feel less strange-like—more at home, if I may say so. Here, ma’am,” opening the first door she came to, “is what was the late Mrs Chancellor’s boudoir. It is eight-and-twenty years next month since she was taken ill suddenly, sitting over there by the window in that very chair. It was heart-disease, I believe. She had had a good deal of trouble in her time, poor lady, for the old Squire was always peculiar. They carried her—wedid (I was her maid then)—into her bedroom—the next room, ma’am—this,” again opening a door, with an air of peculiar gratification in what she was going to say, “and she died the same night in the bed you see, standing as it does now.”The present Mrs Chancellor gave a little shiver.“The next room again, ma’am,” proceeded Mrs Grier, “is quite as pleasant a one as this, and about the same size. It is the room in which old Mr Chancellor breathed his last, last December. He was eighty-nine, ma’am; but he died very hard, for all that. We prepared both these rooms that you might take your choice.”“Thank you,” replied Eugenia. “I certainly do not feel as if I preferred either. What rooms did the last Mr and Mrs Chancellor use when they were here?” she went on to ask, in a desperate hope that she might light upon some more inviting habitation than these great, dark, musty apartments, with their funereal four-post bedsteads and gloomy associations.“They had rooms on the other side of the passage,” said Mrs Grier. “Mrs Chancellor had a prejudice against thosebeautifulmahogany bedsteads,” with indignant emphasis. Evidently Herbert Chancellor’s wife had found small favour in the eyes of Mrs Grier. “But Mr Chancellordied,” with satisfaction, “in his grandfather’s room—the next door, as I told you, ma’am, to this.”“I don’t wonder at it,” thought Eugenia to herself. She wished she could find courage to ask if it would not be possible for her at once to take up her quarters in one of the rooms in which, so far at least, no Chancellor had lain in state, and was just meditating a request to be shown the one in which Herbert hadnotdied, when Mrs Grier nipped her hopes in the bud.“To-morrow, of course, any room can be prepared that you like, ma’am,” said the housekeeper; “but for to-night, these two beds are the only ones with sheets on.”There was a slightly aggrieved tone in her voice. Eugenia instantly took alarm that she might have hurt the old lady’s feelings.“Oh, thank you, Mrs Grier!” she exclaimed. “I am quite satisfied with this room, and I am sure it will be very comfortable. To-morrow I should like you to show me all over the house. Of course I don’t yet know how we shall settle about any of the rooms permanently. It depends on Captain Chancellor. He intends to refurnish several. But now I think I will go to bed, if you will send Rachel. I am so tired!”“Youdolook tired, ma’am. It quite gave me a turn to see you so white when you came first, ma’am,” said Mrs Grier, more cheerfully than she had yet spoken.And at supper in her own room, when she went downstairs, she confided to Mr Blinkhorn certain agreeable presentiments with regard to their new mistress.“A nice-spoken young lady. None of your dressed-up fine ladies like the last Mrs Chancellor and her daughter, who must have French beds to sleep in, and could never so much as remember one’s name. Oh, no,thisMrs Chancellor is a different kind altogether. But, mark my words, Mr Blinkhorn, she isn’t long for this world. The Captain may talk of luck turning—ah, indeed!—was it for nothing I dreamt I saw our new lady with black hair instead of brown? Was it for nothing the looking-glass dipped out of my hands when I was dusting her room again this afternoon?”“But it didn’t break,” objected Mr Blinkhorn.“Break, what has that to do with it?” exclaimed Mrs Grier, indignantly. “But I know of old it’s no use wasting words on some subjects on you, Mr Blinkhorn. Those that won’t see won’t see, but some day you may remember my words.”But, notwithstanding Mrs Grier’s forebodings, notwithstanding her own wounded and troubled spirit, Eugenia Chancellor soon fell asleep, and slept soundly. She fell asleep with Sydney’s letter under her pillow, and its loving words in her heart; and the next morning, when the sun shone again, and her husband spoke kindly and seemed to have forgotten yesterday’s cloud, she began again to think that after all life might be bright for her, and their home a happy one.“Comme on pense à vingt ans.”

And sometimes I am hopeful as the spring,And up my fluttering heart is borne aloft,As high and gladsome as the lark at sunrise;And then, as though the fowler’s shaft had pierced it,It comes plumb down, with such a dead, dead fall.Philip Van Artevelde.

And sometimes I am hopeful as the spring,And up my fluttering heart is borne aloft,As high and gladsome as the lark at sunrise;And then, as though the fowler’s shaft had pierced it,It comes plumb down, with such a dead, dead fall.Philip Van Artevelde.

It was late in the evening of an August day when Captain Chancellor and his wife reached Halswood. Beauchamp had been anxious to complete the journey at once without any halts by the way, but to do this it had been necessary to leave Winsley very early in the morning, in consequence of which Eugenia was very tired. A certain excitement had kept her up during the first part of the journey, an excitement arising from mingled causes, but of which the anticipation of the glories of Halswood about to be revealed to her was a much less considerable one than would have been generally credited. Till they had passed Marley Junction, the ugly familiar station where everybody coming south from or going north to Wareborough and Bridgenorth always changed carriages, Eugenia had not been without a childish hope that she might catch sight of some home face; Frank perhaps, or more probably his brother, or not impossibly her father even. A sort of warm thrill of pleasure passed through her at the thought; it was more than two months since she had seen arty one of the friends among whom her nineteen years of girlhood had been passed, and before her marriage she had never been away from her father’s house for more than a fortnight—some amount of home-sickness was surely to be excused. All the way to Marley she felt as if she were going home in reality; the sight of a tall chimney, the dirty smoke-begrimed red of the streets of brick houses of the first little manufacturing town through which they passed made the tears come into her eyes. Her husband noticed their dewy appearance and remonstrated with her on the folly of sitting close beside the window, “with that abominable smoke and filthy smuts flying in.” He got up and shut the window, remarking as he did so that railway lines to civilised places should really not be cut through these atrocious manufacturing districts; he trusted nothing would ever necessitate his entering Wareborough or Bridgenorth or any of these Wareshire towns again.

Eugenia said nothing, and changed her seat to the opposite side of the carriage as she was bidden. She had felt no temptation to confide to her husband the real cause of the emotion he had not even imagined to be such, but her eyes did not immediately recover themselves, and Marley once left behind, her spirits fell. Every mile of the unfamiliar country through which their journey now lay seemed to increase her painful sense of loneliness and strangeness.

“Oh,” thought she, as they at last reached Chilworth, the nearest point to Halswood. “Oh, if only this were Bridgenorth, and we were going to the little house, or even to the lodgings we used to talk of living in there, and Sydney perhaps waiting to welcome us.”

The tears got the length of dropping this time. She made no effort to conceal them, for by now it was too dark for her husband to see her face.

No sensation of any kind was perceptible at the little station on their arrival. Under the circumstances, of course any demonstration of rejoicing at the home-coming of the new lord of the greater part of the adjacent soil would have been the extreme of bad taste, and there was nothing by which a stranger could have guessed that the lady and gentleman who got out of the train and quietly passed through the station-gate to the carriage waiting outside were persons of more than ordinary local importance, save perhaps a certain extra obsequiousness on the part of the very unofficial-looking station-master, and a somewhat greater than usual readiness to bestir himself on the part of the solitary porter. Mrs Chancellor, however, was far too self-absorbed to notice anything of the kind; it had never occurred to her to think of herself and her husband as objects of interest or curiosity to the outside world, and had the joy bells been ringing and bonfires blazing she would probably have turned to her companion with an inquiry as to the cause.

There was a momentary delay as she was getting into the carriage—Captain Chancellor turned back to give some additional instruction respecting the luggage. Eugenia standing waiting could not fail to notice that the brougham was a new one, and that everything about it, including the deep mourning livery of the men-servants, was perfectly well-appointed.

“What a nice carriage this is, Beauchamp,” she said, when the door was shut, and they were rolling smoothly and swiftly away.

“Yes,” he replied, not ill-pleased by her admiration; “I wrote for it when I first came down here. There was nothing fit for use. Herbert Chancellor never brought any carriages down here—not of course that they would have been mine if he had. Yes, it is a first-rate little brougham. Did you notice the horses? Oh no, by-the-bye it was too dark.”

“I did not notice them. The lamps lighted up the carriage, and drew my attention to it. The horses were more in the shade. Not that I should venture to give an opinion on them. You know how dreadfully ignorant I am of such things.”

“You will soon pick up quite as much knowledge of the kind as you need. I loathe and detest ‘horsy’ women. Roma even, if she were any one but herself, I should say had a shade too much of that sort of thing. But on the other hand, of course, it doesn’t do to be in a state of utter ignorance about such matters.”

“No, oh no,” said Eugenia. “I quite know how you mean. I want to understand a little more about a good many things that I have not come in the way of hitherto.”

Beauchamp’s tone had been pleasant and encouraging. Eugenia’s impressionable spirits began to rise. If she could but be sure of always pleasing her husband! If she could but feel that in all difficulties, great and small, she might appeal to him, certain of sympathy, certain of encouragement! It might come to be so—married life she had often heard, was not to be tested by the outset. Circumstances so far had certainly been somewhat against her. It might be that this coming to Halswood, so dreaded by her, was to be the beginning of the life of perfect union, of complete mutual comprehension which she had dreamt of.

A glow of new hopefulness seemed to creep through her at the thought—from very intensity of feeling she remained silent, wishing that she could find words in which to express to her husband a tithe of the yearning devotion, the ardent resolutions ready at his slightest bidding to spring into life. In a minute or two he spoke again.

“Are you tired, Eugenia?” he said. “What makes you so silent?”

There was a slight impatience in his tone. He wanted her to be bright and eager, and delighted with everything. He had by now almost got over his fear of “undue or underbred elation” at her good fortune, on his wife’s part, and when alone with him some amount of demonstrative appreciation of what through him had fallen to her share, would not have been objectionable. But, as was usual with her, when carried away by strong feeling of her own, Eugenia perceived nothing of the restrained irritation in Beauchamp’s voice.

“Tired,” she said, with a little start, “oh, no; at least I may be a little tired, but it isn’t that that made me silent. I was only thinking.”

Her voice quivered a little. A sudden fear of hysterics came over Captain Chancellor. Some women always got hysterics when they were tired, and Eugenia was so absurdly excitable. A word or a look at any moment would make her cry.

“Thinking,” he said, half rallyingly, half impatiently; “what about? Nothing unpleasant, I hope? though there certainly is no counting on women’s caprices.”

“I can’t possibly tell youallI was thinking,” she began, still speaking tremulously. “I was thinking how I do hope we shall be happy together in this new life, how I trust you will be pleased with me always, how I hope you will let me come to you with my little difficulties and anxieties, and—and that we may be at one always in everything, and not grow apart from each other. Oh, I can’t half say what I feel. I think—I think, I sympathise a little with the wife in the ‘Lord of Burleigh,’ I feel frightened and ignorant, and a little lonely. But oh, Beauchamp, if you will help me—don’t you remember that beautiful line—

“And he cheered her soul with love.

“If we always keep close together, I shall not regret anything.”

By this time she was in tears. Beauchamp was no great reader of poetry. He “got up” what was wanted for drawing-room small talk, and that was about all. But, as it happened, he knew the poem—the story of it, at least, to which she alluded, and had more than once made great fun of it.

“Catch any woman of the lower classes being such a fool. Founded on fact, not a bit of it. She died of consumption, you may be sure,” was the opinion he had expressed.

So, being a little “put out” to begin with, and by no means in the humour for a sentimental scene—tears, and all the rest of it—Eugenia’s somewhat incoherent speech, the allusion at the end of it especially, met with by no means a tender or sympathising reception.

“Really, Eugenia,” he began, and at the sound of the two words all the new hopefulness, the revived tenderness, the warmth died in the girlish wife’s heart—a cold, dull ache of disappointment, relieved but by the more acute stings of mortification and wounded feeling, setting in, the same instant, in their stead. “Really, Eugenia, you choose very odd times for your fits of—I really don’t know what to call it—exaggerated sentiment, as you object to ‘gushingness.’ We haven’t been quarrelling that I know of, and I have no intention of doing so. What you mean by talking of ‘not regretting’ anything, I don’t know in the least. I hate maudlin sentiment, and that poetry you are so fond of stuffs your head with it. For goodness’ sake, try to be comfortable, and let me be so. No one expects impossibilities of you—you talk as if I were an unreasonable tyrant. If anything could ‘drive us apart,’ as you call it, it would be this sort of nonsense, and these everlasting tears.”

He had paused once or twice in this speech, but Eugenia remained perfectly silent, and this irritated him into saying more than he intended, more than he actually felt, and the consciousness of the harshness of his own words irritated him still further. Still Eugenia did not speak. He let down the carriage window on his side impatiently, thrust his head out into the darkness, then drew it in, and jerked up the glass again. Eugenia did not move—he glanced at her. The tears he had complained of had disappeared as if by magic; her face, in the uncertain light of the carriage lamps, looked unnaturally white and set, the mouth compressed, the eyes gazing straight before them. It was really too bad of her to behave so absurdly, thought Beauchamp, feeling himself not a little aggrieved. Still, he wished he had not spoken quite so strongly.

“Eugenia,” he began again, “do try to be reasonable. You take up everything so exaggeratedly. You know perfectly well I have no wish to hurt you. But really it is not easy to avoid doing so. Living with you is like treading on egg-shells.”

Then she turned towards him with a look in her eyes which he had never seen in them before—a look which the sweet wistful eyes of Eugenia Laurence had never known, a look which should have made her husband consider what he was doing, what he had done.

“It is a terrible pity you did not find out my real character before,” she said, “before it was too late. As it is too late, however, no doubt the best thing you can do is to tell me plainly how I can make myself the least disagreeable to you. You shall be troubled by no more ‘maudlin sentiment,’ or tears. So much I can promise you.” Then she became perfectly silent again. Captain Chancellor gave a little laugh.

“I am glad to hear it,” he said, with a slight sneer. “And, by Jove! what a temper she has after all,” he thought to himself. “They are all alike, I suppose, all the world over. They all want a tight hand. But I flatter myself I know how to break them in.” Then he hummed a tune, drew out his watch and looked what o’clock it was, fidgeted with the window again, all with an air of perfect indifference, which he imagined to be his actual state of mind. But far down in his heart there was a little ache of self-reproach and uneasiness. Had Eugenia turned to him now with tearful eyes and broken words, little as he might have understood her feelings, he would certainly not have repulsed her.

Just at this moment the carriage turned in at the Halswood lodge. There was an instant’s stoppage, while the heavy iron gates were opened, then they went on again, even more swiftly and smoothly than before.

“We are only a quarter of a mile from the house now,” said Captain Chancellor. “You should see the lights from your side.”

“Oh, indeed,” said Eugenia, indifferently, turning her eyes listlessly in the direction in which he pointed, thinking that she would not care if an earthquake were suddenly to swallow up Halswood and everything connected with it, herself included; yet determined to hide all feeling—to appear as unconcerned as Beauchamp himself. “Ah, yes, I see them over there. I hope they will have fires,” with a little shiver.

“Fires?” repeated Beauchamp. “After such a hot day. Why, it is oppressive still. You can’t be cold, surely?”

“Yes, I am,” she said, “very;” and as she spoke, the carriage drew up under the pillared portico, which Captain Chancellor had pronounced so desperately ugly the first time he came to Halswood, and in another moment Eugenia’s feet had crossed the threshold of what was now her home.

Three or four servants were waiting in the hall. At first sight Mrs Chancellor imagined them to be all strangers to her, but in another moment, to her delight, she recognised in the face of a young girl standing modestly somewhat in the rear of the others, the familiar features of Barbara’s niece. Mrs Eyrecourt had not succeeded in her design of substituting a more experienced lady’s maid in the place of Eugenia’s protégée. Something had been said about it, but in the pressure of more important arrangements Captain Chancellor had allowed the matter to stand over for the present, and it had been arranged that Rachel should be sent to Halswood the day before her mistress’s arrival, but in the absorption of her own thoughts Eugenia had for the time forgotten this, and the pleasure of the surprise was great.

“Oh, Rachel!” she exclaimed with effusion, darting forward and shaking hands eagerly with the young girl—“I am so pleased to see you. Did you come yesterday, and how did you leave them all? How is papa? And Miss Sydney—Mrs Thurston, I mean?”

“They are both very well, indeed, ma’am,” said the girl, flushing with pleasure at the friendly greeting—her spirits had been somewhat depressed since her arrival; the great, empty house, the few servants, all middle-aged or old, had seemed strange and cold to Barbara’s niece; “I went to see Mrs Thurston the last thing the night before I left—there is a letter waiting for you from her upstairs that she told me to put in your room—and Mr Laurence, ma’am, he wished me to—”

“Eugenia,” said Captain Chancellor’s voice from behind his wife, “Eugenia, if you are notveryparticularly occupied, will you spare me a moment?”

She had vexed him again, but in the softening influence of the home news, the sound of the dear home names, Eugenia’s better self was again uppermost. There was no resentment or haughtiness in her tone or manner as she turned quickly towards her husband.

“Oh, I am so sorry,” she exclaimed; “I was so pleased to see Rachel and hear about them all at home, that!” But she said no more, for glancing at Beauchamp, she saw that her words had deepened rather than lightened the look of annoyance on his face.

“Mrs Grier,” he said, addressing an elderly person in black silk, tall, thin, stiff, and yet depressed-looking, who came forward as she heard her name. “Eugenia, this is Mrs Grier. Mrs Grier has been at Halswood for I don’t know how many years. How many is it?” turning to the housekeeper with the pleasant smile that so lighted up his somewhat impassive face.

“Thirty-three, sir,” replied Mrs Grier, thawing a little, “and more changes in the three than in all the thirty.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Eugenia, kindly, shaking hands with the melancholy housekeeper. “You must have had a great deal to go through lately.”

“I have, indeed, ma’am. Three funerals in a year, and all three the masters of the house,” answered Mrs Grier, shaking her head solemnly. “It isn’t often things happen so in a family. But all the same, ma’am, I wish you joy, you and my master, ma’am.”

“Thank you,” said the two thus cheerfully addressed.

Eugenia felt almost inclined to laugh; but Captain Chancellor hardly relished the peculiar style of Mrs Grier’s congratulation.

“It’s time the luck should turn again now,” he said lightly. “Three is the correct number for that sort of thing, isn’t it?” Mrs Grier seemed struck by the remark.

“There may be something in that, sir,” she allowed.

Then one or two others of the head servants, who, having endured the twenty-five years of semi-starvation of the old Squire’s rule, had come to be looked upon as fixtures in the place, were in turn introduced by name to Mrs Chancellor.

“Some of the new servants are to be here to-morrow,” said Mrs Grier, to Captain Chancellor. “I hope you will find everything comfortable in the meantime, sir.”

Dinner—or, more properly speaking, supper—was prepared for the travellers in the dining-room—a huge, dark cavern of a room it looked to Eugenia, who shivered as the fireless grate met her view. She was too tired to eat; but, afraid of annoying her husband, she made a pretence of doing so, feeling eager for Sydney’s letter, and a chat with Rachel about “home,” in her own room.

These pleasures were deferred for a little by the appearance of Mrs Grier to do the honour of showing her lady her rooms. The housekeeper had rather taken a fancy to Mrs Chancellor. Eugenia’s allusion to what she “must have had to go through,” had been a most lucky one, for Mrs Grier was one of those curiously constituted beings to whom condolence never comes amiss. The most delicate flattery was less acceptable to her than a sympathising remark that she was “looking far from well,” and no one could pay her a higher compliment than by telling her she bore traces of having known a great deal of trouble. She was not, for her class, an uneducated person; but she was constitutionally superstitious. Omens, dreams, deathbeds, funerals, all things ghastly and ghostly, were dear to her soul; and her thirty-three years’ life in a gloomy, half-deserted house, such as Halswood had been under the oldrégime, had not conduced to a healthier tone of mind.

“Along this way, if you please, ma’am,” she said to Eugenia, pointing to the long corridor which ran to the right of the great staircase they had come up by. “The rooms to the left have not been occupied for many years. We thought—that is, Mr Blinkhorn and I—that you would prefer to use the rooms which have been the best family-rooms for some generations. It would feel less strange-like—more at home, if I may say so. Here, ma’am,” opening the first door she came to, “is what was the late Mrs Chancellor’s boudoir. It is eight-and-twenty years next month since she was taken ill suddenly, sitting over there by the window in that very chair. It was heart-disease, I believe. She had had a good deal of trouble in her time, poor lady, for the old Squire was always peculiar. They carried her—wedid (I was her maid then)—into her bedroom—the next room, ma’am—this,” again opening a door, with an air of peculiar gratification in what she was going to say, “and she died the same night in the bed you see, standing as it does now.”

The present Mrs Chancellor gave a little shiver.

“The next room again, ma’am,” proceeded Mrs Grier, “is quite as pleasant a one as this, and about the same size. It is the room in which old Mr Chancellor breathed his last, last December. He was eighty-nine, ma’am; but he died very hard, for all that. We prepared both these rooms that you might take your choice.”

“Thank you,” replied Eugenia. “I certainly do not feel as if I preferred either. What rooms did the last Mr and Mrs Chancellor use when they were here?” she went on to ask, in a desperate hope that she might light upon some more inviting habitation than these great, dark, musty apartments, with their funereal four-post bedsteads and gloomy associations.

“They had rooms on the other side of the passage,” said Mrs Grier. “Mrs Chancellor had a prejudice against thosebeautifulmahogany bedsteads,” with indignant emphasis. Evidently Herbert Chancellor’s wife had found small favour in the eyes of Mrs Grier. “But Mr Chancellordied,” with satisfaction, “in his grandfather’s room—the next door, as I told you, ma’am, to this.”

“I don’t wonder at it,” thought Eugenia to herself. She wished she could find courage to ask if it would not be possible for her at once to take up her quarters in one of the rooms in which, so far at least, no Chancellor had lain in state, and was just meditating a request to be shown the one in which Herbert hadnotdied, when Mrs Grier nipped her hopes in the bud.

“To-morrow, of course, any room can be prepared that you like, ma’am,” said the housekeeper; “but for to-night, these two beds are the only ones with sheets on.”

There was a slightly aggrieved tone in her voice. Eugenia instantly took alarm that she might have hurt the old lady’s feelings.

“Oh, thank you, Mrs Grier!” she exclaimed. “I am quite satisfied with this room, and I am sure it will be very comfortable. To-morrow I should like you to show me all over the house. Of course I don’t yet know how we shall settle about any of the rooms permanently. It depends on Captain Chancellor. He intends to refurnish several. But now I think I will go to bed, if you will send Rachel. I am so tired!”

“Youdolook tired, ma’am. It quite gave me a turn to see you so white when you came first, ma’am,” said Mrs Grier, more cheerfully than she had yet spoken.

And at supper in her own room, when she went downstairs, she confided to Mr Blinkhorn certain agreeable presentiments with regard to their new mistress.

“A nice-spoken young lady. None of your dressed-up fine ladies like the last Mrs Chancellor and her daughter, who must have French beds to sleep in, and could never so much as remember one’s name. Oh, no,thisMrs Chancellor is a different kind altogether. But, mark my words, Mr Blinkhorn, she isn’t long for this world. The Captain may talk of luck turning—ah, indeed!—was it for nothing I dreamt I saw our new lady with black hair instead of brown? Was it for nothing the looking-glass dipped out of my hands when I was dusting her room again this afternoon?”

“But it didn’t break,” objected Mr Blinkhorn.

“Break, what has that to do with it?” exclaimed Mrs Grier, indignantly. “But I know of old it’s no use wasting words on some subjects on you, Mr Blinkhorn. Those that won’t see won’t see, but some day you may remember my words.”

But, notwithstanding Mrs Grier’s forebodings, notwithstanding her own wounded and troubled spirit, Eugenia Chancellor soon fell asleep, and slept soundly. She fell asleep with Sydney’s letter under her pillow, and its loving words in her heart; and the next morning, when the sun shone again, and her husband spoke kindly and seemed to have forgotten yesterday’s cloud, she began again to think that after all life might be bright for her, and their home a happy one.

“Comme on pense à vingt ans.”

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