"Perfectly, thank you," answered Captain Chancellor, and the tone of the three words was unmistakable. So Major Thanet took his cue, and not being behind the rest of the world in his capability of "bearing perfectly like a Christian the misfortunes of another," resigned himself with a cigar, and a sigh over "Chancellor's infatuation," to the apparently inevitable, and being introduced to Eugenia a day or two after by her fiance, congratulated her with as much graceful fervour as if no piece of news of the kind had ever in his life afforded him such unmingled satisfaction. Eugenia thought him charming, seeing him through the flattering medium of his position as one of Beauchamp's oldest friends, and was a very little surprised that the cordiality of her expressions regarding him hardly appeared as gratifying to her lover as she could have expected. "Am I too outspoken, Beauchamp?" she ventured to inquire. "You don't think me `gushing,' I hope?" with a little smile, but some anxiety, and his answer, "Never to _me_," was scarcely reassuring. "I will try to learn to be more dignified and--and more reserved, or whatever it is my manner is wanting in," she said, penitentially. And then the tiny cloud cleared off Beauchamp's face, and he told her she could never in _his_ eyes be nearer perfection than she was already, and all was sunshine again--sunshine almost too brilliant and dazzling, with a want of the steady glow about it which tells of the settled maturity of summer; reminding one rather of the flashing radiance of uncertain April "with his shoures," "April, when men woo"--sunshine, nevertheless, which brought back the roses to Eugenia's cheeks, and added new radiance to her beautiful eyes. VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER SEVEN. FAIT ACCOMPLI. Things without all remedy Should be without regard: what's done is done. _Macbeth_. And thus it came about that Eugenia returned home to Wareborough the week before her sister's marriage, a very picture of radiant happiness. "How little we imagined what was to be the end of my visit to Nunswell! Do you remember how dreadfully unwilling I was to go?" she said to Sydney, when they were alone together for the first time the evening she came home. And Sydney smiled back to her, and tried her best to be sympathising in joy as in sorrow, and Eugenia was too intensely happy to discover that there was any effort required on her sister's part, or that it was not entirely successful.