"She does not know him as I do; she could not understand him," thought Eugenia. "I could not, even by her, endure to hear him blamed or judged in the common conventional way, for whatever others might think of him, I believe him to be blameless. My faith in him is unshaken." And so she believed it to be, not discerning that in this morbid shrinking from any discussion of the subject even with Sydney, there lay concealed an unacknowledged misgiving as to the soundness of the foundations of her trust. So she kept silence, and flattered herself that no one but Sydney could possibly suspect that anything was amiss. It was not difficult for her just at present to keep a little more than usual in the background, the young fiancee being naturally the nine days' centre of observation. And even if Miss Laurence did look hardly in her ordinary spirits, people did not much wonder at it. "It must be a trial to the two sisters, especially to Miss Laurence, poor girl, to think of being parted, even though Mrs Frank Thurston, that is to be, will only be a few streets off," observed one kindly-hearted Wareborough matron to Mrs Dalrymple during a morning call when the Laurence family happened to come on the tapis; to which Mrs Dalrymple, who was feeling anything but happy about Eugenia's altered looks, agreed with almost suspicious eagerness. For Mr Dalrymple, with true masculine magnanimity, had already given symptoms of having a stock of "I told you sos" in readiness for the first suitable opportunity, and had Eugenia been less preoccupied, her friend's increasingly demonstrative affection and constant reiteration of "how _very_ well she was looking," could not but have roused the girl's own suspicions. Curiously enough, in these days Eugenia seemed to turn with satisfaction to Gerald Thurston. "How very much Gerald has improved again of late," she remarked one day naively to Sydney. "For some time after he came home, I thought India had spoilt him. He seemed rough and careless, as if he had got out of the way of women's society, and was turning into a moody old bachelor. But now he has got back his nice, gentle, understanding way. He seems to know by instinct when, when--" she stopped and hesitated--"when Frank and his chattering are almost more than I can bear," had been in her thoughts, but she recollected herself in time to change it--"when one is tired and disinclined to talk or anything," she said, wearily, and Sydney had hard work to force back the expression of sympathy which she felt would not at this stage be welcome. "Yes," she answered simply, "Gerald is very good and kind." She would not have been the least offended had Eugenia finished her sentence as had been on her tongue. How she pitied her no words could have told, and many a time Frank's unconscious cheerfulness jarred even on Sydney herself, poor child, feeling almost as if the contrast of her own happy content was a crime against Eugenia's shattered hopes.