ould have found much difficulty
in keeping the peace under these circumstances, but for the frequent
presence of Eugenie, and the pressure of his own dull remorse. 'I
too--have--much to forgive!'--that, he knew well, would be the only
reference involving personal reproach that he would ever hear from
her lips, either to his original deceit, or to those wild weeks at
Versailles (that so much ranker and sharper offence!)--when, in his
loneliness and craving, he had gambled both on her ignorance and on
Phoebe's death. Yet he did not deceive himself. The relation between
them was broken; he had lost his friend. Her very cheerfulness and
gentleness somehow enforced it. How natural!--how just! None the less
his bitter realisation of it had worked with crushing effect upon a
miserable man.

About Christmas, Lord Findon's health had again caused his family
anxiety. He was ordered to Cannes, and Eugenie accompanied him. Before
she went she had gone despairingly once more through all the ingenious
but quite fruitless inquiries instituted by the lawyers; and she had
written a kind letter to Fenwick begging to be kept informed, and
adding at the end a few timid words expressing her old sympathy with
his work, and her best wishes for the success of the pictures that she
understood he was to exhibit in the spring.

Then she and her father departed. Fenwick had felt their going as
perhaps the sharpest pang in this intolerable winter. But he had
scarcely answered her letter. What was there to say? At least he had
never asked her or her father for money--had never owed Lord Findon a
penny. There was some small comfort in that.

* * * * *

Nevertheless, it was of money that he thought--and must think--night
and day.

After his interview with the magnificent gentlemen in Lincoln's Inn
Fields, he made his way wearily to a much humbler office in Bedford
Row. Here was a small solicitor to whom he had often resorted lately,
under the constant pressure of his financial difficulties. He spent
an hour in this man's room. When he came out, he walked fast towards
Oxford Street and the west, hardly conscious in his excitement of
where he was going. The lawyer he had just seen had for the first time
mentioned the word 'bankruptcy.' 'I scarcely see, Mr. Fenwick, how you
can avoid it.'

Well, it might come to that--it might. But he still had his six
pictures--time to finish two others that were now on hand--and t