nds?

Eugenie came close to her, took the irresponsive hand in hers, tucked
the shawls closer round the wasted limbs, bent over her, chatting
and caressing. Then, as the sun began to drop quickly, Madame de
Pastourelles rose, and went to the corner of the chateau, to see if
the gentlemen were in sight. But in less than a minute Mrs. Welby
called her back.

'I must go in now,' she said, fretfully. 'This place is really _too_
cold!'

'She won't let me go to meet them,' thought Eugenie, involuntarily;
sharply reproaching herself, a moment afterwards, for the mere
thought.

But when Elsie had been safely escorted home, Eugenie slipped back
through the darkening streets, taking good care that her path should
not lead her across her father and Arthur Welby.

She fled towards the western flight of the Hundred Steps, and ran down
the vast staircase towards the Orangerie, and the still shining lake
beyond, girdled with vaporous woods. A majesty of space and light
enwrapt her, penetrated, as everywhere at Versailles, with memory,
with the bitterness and the glory of human things. In the distance the
voices of the children, still playing beside their nurses on the upper
terrace, died away. Close by, a white Artemis on her pedestal bent
forward--eager--her gleaming bow in air, watching, as it were, the
arrow she had just sped toward the windows of Madame de Pompadour;
and beside her, a nymph, daughter of gods, turned to the palace with a
free, startled movement, shading her eyes that she might gaze the more
intently on that tattered tricolour which floats above the palace of
'Le Roi Soleil.'

* * * * *

'Oh, poor Arthur--poor Arthur! And I did it!--I did it!'

It was the cry of Eugenie's inmost life.

And before she knew, she found herself enveloped in memories that
rolled in upon her like waves of storm. How long it had been before
she would allow herself to see anything amiss with this marriage she
had herself made! And, indeed, it was only since Elsie's illness that
things dimly visible before had sprung into that sharp and
piteous relief in which they stood to-day. Before it, indications,
waywardnesses, the faults of a young and petted wife. But since the
physical collapse, the inner motives and passions had stood up bare
and black, like the ribs of a wrecked ship from the sand. And as
Eugenie had been gradually forced to understand them, they had worked
upon her own mind as a silent,