"We have lived in such different worlds," said Eugenia to herself, "that I suppose it is no wonder we do not at once understand each other's feelings on all subjects. Perhaps in a little while I shall manage better, and, of course, before his sister little things may annoy him that would not otherwise do so, and it is nice of him to wish her to see everything about me in the best light. If only he had not gone away angry with me!" Thus she tried to soften and excuse what had so pained her. She would not, even to herself, allow that she felt more than a passing disappointment; that Beauchamp himself was beginning to reveal a character less admirable, less lofty than her ideal, she was as yet far from owning. The triviality, and vulgarity even, of some of the prejudices and apprehensions he had avowed, she instinctively refrained from dwelling upon. She could not have understood them had she done so, for the excuses for her husband's smallnesses--the struggling, anomalous circumstances in which the childhood and youth of the brother and sister had been spent, the triumph of Gertrude's successful marriage and her determination that Beauchamp's career should be a brilliant one--all these were unknown to Eugenia. She saw that he was considerably under his sister's influence, much more so, indeed, than she had expected; but she attributed it to habit and association, knowing little of the greatness of the obligations which he owed to Mrs Eyrecourt. And even had the whole history been related to her, all the details explained, it would have been of little service. Eugenia was far from the stage of being able to pity or judge leniently where she could not sympathise; and, indeed, any suggestion that there were deficiencies in her husband's nature for which she must learn to "make allowance" she would still, at this time, have repelled with indignation; the hard lesson before her could be learnt by herself alone, and the hardest part would be that of recognising the good yet remaining in her lot, though the manner and form of it should be utterly different from the imagined bliss of her girlish dreams. She was walking slowly up and down the terrace on the south side of the house--the same terrace which had been the scene of Roma's unintentional eavesdropping--when a voice from behind startled her, a small, eager, childish voice. "Aunty 'Genia," it said, "Aunty 'Genia, I've wunned away from nurse and I want the stowy about when you was a little girl," and from round the corner, running at full speed, appeared Floss, breathless and shaggier even than her wont. "You've runned away from nurse, Floss?" said Eugenia, seating herself as she spoke on a garden bench beside her, and lifting the child on to her knee. "I don't know that you should have done that. We had better find nurse first, or she won't know where you are."