She pitied Gerald too. It was worse for him now, she said to herself, than if all had been as she had expected. True, he might then have realised more acutely the sharpness of his disappointment, have suffered unselfishly from his misgivings as to the worthiness of her choice; "but still," thought Sydney, in her sensible way, "it would have been over and certain--a thing that was to be, and he would have been beginning to get accustomed to it." But now though Eugenia in the body was still among them, the heart and soul--the very life it seemed just now, had gone out of her. All the freshness and brightness had been sacrificed--whatever possibilities the far-off future might yet conceal, the Eugenia of Gerald's first love, the Eugenia of his absent dreams, was gone for ever, could never be his. She _had_ never been his, it was true, but Sydney's womanish faith in the "what would have been," was indefensibly great. Correspondingly deep was her unspoken disappointment, her vehement, almost fierce indignation against the cause of all this trouble, the wanton destroyer of her sister's youth and happiness. Had she come upon the subject with Frank, he would, she knew, have either refused to believe in Eugenia's suffering, or have blamed her as herself the originator of it. "But he doesn't understand her, and that man threw dust in his eyes. Supposing even that Eugenia _was_ easily deceived, allowing her to be, as Frank says, impressionable and extreme, does that excuse _him_; cold-hearted, unprincipled, selfish man of the world that he must be, to have robbed my darling of her happiness." But all these feelings, little suspected under her quiet exterior, Sydney kept to herself. Late one afternoon, about six weeks after Captain Chancellor had left Wareborough, the sisters on their way home from a long and rather fatiguing shopping expedition, happened to pass Barnwood Terrace. "Don't you think we might go in and see Mrs Dalrymple for a few minutes?" suggested Sydney. "She has been twice to see us since we have called on her, and she is always so kind." "Very well; if you like I don't care," replied Eugenia, and Sydney hastened to ring the bell before she could change her mind. The girl was jealous for her sister that no occasion should be given for either kindly or spiteful gossip, and it was well for Eugenia that she had so discriminating a friend at hand; for in the preoccupation of her perplexity and trouble, it would never have occurred to her that any regard should be paid to the possible comments of the little outside Wareborough world. Mrs Dalrymple was at home, and as cordially delighted as usual to see her two friends, yet Sydney was at once conscious of a slight underlying constraint in her manner, perceptible chiefly perhaps in the kind-hearted woman's extra effusiveness and palpable endeavour to be quite as easy and cheerful as her wont.