“It’s a good habit for a wife to cultivate,” returned Miss Chris, shaking the raisins together.  “If my poor father stayed out until four o’clock in the morning he found my mother up and dressed when he came in.”

“I should say it was ‘poor’ grandmamma,” commented Eugenia drily.  “But Dudley won’t find me after midnight.”  Then she regarded Miss Chris affectionately.  “What a blessing that you didn’t marry, Aunt Chris,” she said.  “You’d have prepared some man to merit damnation.”

“My dear Eugie,” protested Miss Chris, half shocked, half flattered at the picture.  “But you’re a good wife, all the same, like your mother before you.  The only fault I ever saw in poor Meely was that she wouldn’t put currants in her fruit cake.  Tom was always fond of currants—­” in a moment she abruptly recalled herself.  “My dear, I don’t say you haven’t had your trials,” she went on.  “Dudley isn’t a saint, but I don’t believe even the Lord expects a man to be that.  It doesn’t seem to set well on them.”

“Oh, I am not blaming Dudley,” returned Eugenia as leniently as Miss Chris.  “We live and let live—­only our tastes are different.  Why, the chief proof of his affection for me is that he always describes to me the object of his admiration—­which means that his eyes stray, but his heart does not, and the heart’s the chief thing, after all.”

“I’m glad you aren’t jealous,” said Miss Chris.  “I used to think you were—­as a child.”

“Oh, I was—­as a child,” replied Eugenia.  Her kindly face clouded.  It was borne in upon her with a twinge of conscience that the absence of jealousy which had become the safeguard of Dudley’s peace proved her own lack of passion.  What a hell some women—­good women—­might have made of Dudley’s life—­that genial life that flowed as smoothly as a song.  In the flights and pauses of his temperament what discord might have shocked the decent measure of their marriage?  Persistent passion would have bored him; exacting love would have soured the charm of his radiant egotism.  It was because she was not in love with him, that her love had wisely meted out to him only so much or so little of herself as he desired—­and with a sudden arraignment of Fate she admitted that because she had failed in the first requirement of the marriage sacrament, she had made that sacrament other than a mockery.  Out of her own unfulfilment Dudley’s happiness was fulfilled.

“Yes, Dudley suits me,” she said absently, “and, what’s the main thing, I suit Dudley.”

“Well, well, I’m glad of it,” returned Miss Chris, but in a moment Eugenia was kneeling beside her, her hand upon the open Bible.

“Dear Aunt Chris, you haven’t told me all,” she said.

“All?” Miss Chris wavered.  “You mean about Bernard?”

“I mean about the governor.”  She closed the.  Bible and pushed it from her.  “Do you think he is quite, quite happy?”

Miss Chris laughed in protest.