So she was, unutterably happy. Life for her, she felt, could hold no more perfect moment than this, and that there could be anything unbecoming in expressing her happiness, above all to him to whom she owed it, who shared it, as she believed, to the full, never in the faintest degree occurred to her. She did not think her lover cold or less fervent in his rejoicing than herself; she trusted him too utterly for such an idea to be possible to her, even had there been more cause for it than there really was. For, after the first instant, Captain Chancellor found it easy to respond to her expressions of thankfulness and delight; found it too by no means an unpleasing experience to be hailed by this lovely creature as the hero of her dreams, the fairy prince whom even yet she could hardly believe had chosen her--a very Cinderella as she seemed to herself in comparison with him--out of all womankind to be his own. And, even if a shade more reserve, a trifle more dignity, would have been better in accordance with his taste, his notion of the perfectly well-bred bearing in such circumstances, after all, was there not every excuse for such innocent shortcoming, such sweet forgetfulness? She was so young, he reflected, had seen nothing, or worse than nothing, of society,--for far better for a girl to be brought up in a convent than in the mixed society of a place like Wareborough,--it was only a marvel to see her as she was. And deeper than these reflections lay another consciousness of excuse in his mind, which yet, even to himself, he would have shrunk from the bad taste of putting into words,--the consciousness that it was not every girl whose bridegroom elect was a Beauchamp Chancellor! "What a child it is!" he murmured to himself, as he stroked back the sunny brown hair from the white temples, and looked smilingly down into the liquid depths of the sweet, loving eyes. There would be a great deal to teach her, he thought to himself; some things perhaps he must help her to unlearn; but with such a pupil the prospect of the task before him was not appalling. Suddenly there recurred to him the memory of the misapprehension of his words of which Mrs Dalrymple had told him. This must be set right at once,--his _fiancee_ must be taught to view such things differently, to recognise the established feelings of the world--his world--on such matters. "Eugenia, my dearest," he began, rather gravely, and the gravity reflected itself in her face as instantly as a passing cloud across the sun is mirrored in the clear water of the lake beneath, "I want to ask you one thing. How could you distrust me, misinterpret me so, as Mrs Dalrymple tells me you did?"