it was becoming too big a thing, this devotion of his, both
in Eugenie's life and also in the eyes of the world. Lord Findon must
needs suppose--he did not choose to _know_--that people were talking;
and if Eugenie would not free herself from her wretched Albert, she
must not provide him--poor child!--with any plausible excuse.

All of which reasoning was strictly according to the canons as Lord
Findon understood them; but it did not leave him much the happier. He
was a sensitive, affectionate man, with great natural cleverness,
and much natural virtue--wholly unleavened by either thought or
discipline. He did the ordinary things from the ordinary motives; but
he suffered when the ordinary things turned out ill, more than another
man would have done. It would certainly have been better, he ruefully
admitted, if he had not meddled so much with Eugenie's youth. And
presently he supposed he should have to forgive Charlie!--(Charlie was
the son who had married his nurse)--if only to prove to himself that
he was not really the unfeeling or snobbish father of the story-books.

Ah! there was the upstairs door! Should he show himself, and make
Arthur understand that he was their dear friend all the same, and
always would be?--it was only a question of a little drawing-in.

But his courage failed him. He heard the well-known step come
downstairs and cross the hall. The front door closed, and Lord Findon
was still balancing the paper-knife.

Would he really marry that nice child Elsie? Elsie Bligh was a cousin
of the Findons; a fair-haired, slender slip of a thing, the daughter
of a retired Indian general. The Findons had given a ball the year
before for her coming-out, and she had danced through the season,
haloed, Euphrosyne-like, by a charm of youth and laughter--till she
met Arthur Welby. Since then Euphrosyne had grown a little white
and piteous, and there had been whisperings and shakings of the head
amongst the grown-ups who were fond of her.

Well, well; he supposed Eugenie would give him some notion of the way
things had gone. As to her--his charming, sweet-natured Eugenie!--it
comforted him to remember the touch of resolute and generally cheerful
stoicism in her character. If a hard thing had to be done, she would
not only do it without flinching, but without avenging it on the
bystanders afterwards. A quality rare in women!

* * * * *

'Papa!--is the carriage there?'

It was her