"How?" asked Eugenia. "Of course I know she cares for Beauchamp, and-- and takes great interest in him and all that, but still I don't quite know how you mean." Roma looked surprised. "Has Beauchamp never told you how Gertrude has all her life been almost like a mother to him?" she said. "And to me too," she added. "I wonder he never told you." "There has been so little time," said Eugenia, hesitatingly; "but I wish you would tell me. I want to understand things better." There were no secrets involved. Roma was ready enough to give Beauchamp's wife a little sketch of the past. When it was finished Eugenia sighed. "Thank you," she said. "I am glad to know it; I wish I had known it before. Perhaps it might have given me a different feeling to Mrs Eyrecourt, and I might have managed to make her like me. As it is, I fear she does not. Oh, Roma," she went on, for the first time addressing Miss Eyrecourt by her Christian name--"oh, Roma, I wish I understood better. I am afraid I am not fit for the life before me. People seem to look at things so differently from what I fancied. I don't always understand Beauchamp even. I vex him without in the least meaning it. You know him so well, do you think you could help me at all? I am so terribly, so miserably afraid of his coming to think he has made a mistake." The large brown eyes looked up beseechingly into Roma's; the piteous, troubled expression went straight to Roma's heart. "You poor child!" she exclaimed impulsively, but checking herself quickly she went on in a different tone. "You must not be afraid. Things always seem strange and alarming at first. Try and take them more lightly and don't be too easily daunted. I _do_ know Beauchamp well, and I can assure you that, like many men, his bark is worse than his bite. You are more likely to annoy him by trying too much than too little to please him. He likes things to go on smoothly, and he can't understand exaggerated feeling of any kind. I don't think he is difficult to please, but he has got a certain set of ideas about women and wives--many men have, you know, but they modify in time. Only I suppose it is necessary to some extent to _seem_ to agree with one's husband whether one does thoroughly or not--just at first, you know, before people have got to understand each other quite well." "I am afraid that sort of thing would be very difficult to me," said Eugenia, sadly. "You see, I have always been accustomed to saying all I felt, to meeting sympathy wherever I wanted it. In some things I found it in my father; in others in my sister." "You have been exceptionally happy," said Roma.