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"Arthur is changed for the better, but his mother for the worse," she said to Judy, certain that the old lady would retail it to her mistress. "A woman of fifty, that always dressed in dark colors, sensibly, to take all at once to red, and yellow, and blue, and to order bonnets like the Empress Eugenie's ... well, one can't call her crazy, but she's on the way."
Yet there, in the way, stood the image of Phoebe, as Daisy Hewson described her, pale, weary, desperate, making all speech, all movement, on the part of the woman, for jealousy of whom the wife had so ignorantly destroyed herself and Fenwick, a thing impossible. Eugénie's only comfort indeed, at this time, was the comfort of religion.
And last year he turned to me I was able to help him through his death. I had been his true wife and he knew it. She spoke quietly, brushing the tears from her eyes. But with the last words, her voice wavered a little. Phoebe had bowed her head upon the hand which held hers, and there was no spectator of the feeling in Eugénie's face.
Twelve years! and then to find this, dropped into your arms by the gods this living, breathing promise of all delight! Deep in Eugénie's heart there stirred the pang of her own pitiful motherhood, of the child who had just flickered into life, and out of it, through one summer's day. She shyly put her arm round the girl. 'May I, she said, timidly 'may I kiss you?
He was a clever amateur, and relished the details of the business. 'Smells good! he said, in Eugénie's ear, sniffing the scents of the studio. 'Looks like a fine subject too. And just now he's king of it. The torments are all ahead. Hullo, Fenwick! may we come in? Fenwick turned sharply and saw them in the doorway. He came to meet them with mingled pleasure and embarrassment. 'Come in, please!
Is not this because we constantly omit to turn the stream of psychological light upon our impulsive determinations, and fail to explain the subtile reasons, mysteriously conceived in our minds, which impelled them? Perhaps Eugenie's deep passion should be analyzed in its most delicate fibres; for it became, scoffers might say, a malady which influenced her whole existence.
Perhaps the man was mad, as Eugénie insisted; perhaps much was due to some obscure brain effects of exposure and hardship during the siege of Paris for the war had followed close on their honeymoon. But, madness or wickedness, it was all the same; Eugénie's life was ruined, and her father could neither mend it nor avenge it.
Closeburn is the place where the Kirkpatricks, the Empress Eugénie's family, used to live before they went to Spain. At Auldgirth we went over a bridge built by Carlyle's father. At Mauchline Burns grew from a boy into a man and fell in love. At Ellisland, Burns lived for a long time with his handsome wife, Jean Armour. At Dalswinton the first steamboat made its first trip, and Burns was on it.
Other women bow their heads and suffer in silence; they go their way dying, resigned, weeping, forgiving, praying, and recollecting, till they draw their last breath. This is love, true love, the love of angels, the proud love which lives upon its anguish and dies of it. Such was Eugenie's love after she had read that dreadful letter.
The pure, the proud, the immaculate Eugenie! "There is! and in madame's chamber!" he faltered unconsciously. Eugenie's quick apprehensions seized the foul thought. Her eyes flashed her cheek crimsoned. But her lofty and generous nature conquered even the indignant and scornful burst that rushed to her lips. The truth! could she trust the man?
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