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

She moved.  The trance was broken.

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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