this queer world; and
there is no saint, man or woman, of whom this can be said, that has
ever repelled the sinners. It is the difference between St. Francis
and St. Dominic!

How very little--all the same--could Eugenie feel herself with the
saints, on this October afternoon! She sat, to begin with, on the
threshold of Madame de Pompadour's apartment; and in the next place,
she had never been more tremulously steeped in doubts and yearnings,
entirely concerned with her friends and her affections. It was a
re-birth; not of youth--how could that be, she herself would have
asked, seeing that she was now thirty-seven?--but of the natural
Eugenie, who, 'intellectual' though she were, lived really by the
heart, and the heart only. And since it is the heart that makes youth
and keeps it--it _was_ a return of youth--and of beauty--that had come
upon her. In her black dress and shady hat, her collar and cuffs of
white lawn, she was very discreetly, quietly beautiful; the passer-by
did not know what it was that had touched and delighted him, till she
had gone, and he found himself, perhaps, looking after the slim
yet stately figure; but it was beauty none the less. And the autumn
violets, her sister's gift, that were fastened to-day in profusion
at her waist, marked in truth the re-awakening of buried things, of
feminine instincts long repressed. For months, her maid Fanchette had
dressed her, and she had worn obediently all the long crape gowns and
veils dictated by the etiquette of French mourning. But to-day she
had chosen for herself; and in this more ordinary garb, she was
vaguely--sometimes remorsefully--conscious of relief and deliverance.

Two subjects filled her mind. First, a conversation with Fenwick that
she had held that morning, strolling through the upper alleys of
the Park. Poor friend, poor artist! Often and often, during her
wanderings, had her thoughts dwelt anxiously on his discontents and
calamities; she had made her sister or her father write to him when
she could not write herself--though Lord Findon indeed had been for
long much out of patience with him; and during the last few months she
herself had written every week. But she had never felt so clearly the
inexorable limits of her influence with him. This morning, just as
of old, he had thrown himself tempestuously upon her advice, her
sympathy; and she had given him counsel as she best could. But a woman
knows when her counsel is likely to be followed