She was indeed feeling very happy. Never since her marriage, since at least the first few days of unalloyed enjoyment in Paris--had she felt so eagerly delighted about anything. And the bright gleam had not come before it was wanted. Notwithstanding Beauchamp's comfortable belief that they had had a fair amount of variety since coming to Halswood, Eugenia's life had latterly been very dull. The most pleasurable part of the variety had fallen to his own share--two or three "runs up to town" to see about the new furniture, or new carriages, or something of the kind; one or two short visits to bachelor shooting-boxes, to which ladies were not invited; plenty of the exhilarating out-door life, which he thoroughly enjoyed, to which as yet Eugenia, not over strong, and completely unaccustomed to horses, was not sufficiently acclimatised to find it enjoyable. No wonder Captain Chancellor considered that the last three months had been far from dull. They would not have seemed so to Eugenia, had her inner life been a more natural and healthy one; but as it was, the outside distractions that had come in her way had been few and by no means powerful. Most of the "families of position" in the neighbourhood had called on them, but the very biggest people of all--a family residing at a considerable distance from Halswood--had not yet done so; and Beauchamp's evident anxiety on this point had not been unobserved by Eugenia, though resolutely put aside by her as one of the things into which she would not look. Some of their neighbours had already invited them to dinner, and they had gone; but Eugenia had not enjoyed the experience, and felt little wish to renew it. "Long ago," as now in her own mind she had learnt to call her girlhood, even the dullest of dinner-parties would have furnished her quick observation, her lively imagination, her fresh, eager nature with material for interest and entertainment. But now-a-days it was different. She was self-conscious and self-absorbed, and, as a matter of course, less attractive in herself, less ready to find others so. Her one engrossing sensation in company was anxiety to please, or at least to avoid displeasing her husband, which left her none of the leisure of mind or self-forgetfulness essential to her enjoyment of the people or scenes about her. And these had not been sufficiently striking or interesting to force her out of herself. There were not many young people in the neighbourhood; those of her own sex nearest in age to Eugenia happening at this time to be either young girls not yet out of the schoolroom, or youthful matrons, with whom Mrs Chancellor could not feel that she had much in common. They all seemed happy and busy, perfectly at ease, satisfied with their lives and themselves. "Or else," thought Eugenia, "they are more clever at hiding their anxieties and disappointments than I am." In many cases doubtless true. She had not yet learnt, as most