The morning after she had met Gerald, she woke with a slight sensation of expectation. She hoped she should see him again; she wanted to talk to him, and tell him how she had thought over his words; she did not feel indignant at his plain-speaking, for it was not contemptuous and unsympathising like Frank's, but sprang, she could not but feel, from genuine anxiety for her good, from single-minded incapability of advising her to act otherwise than as he believed to be right. "Still it is often impossible," she thought, "for one person to judge of right and wrong for another," and, more out of a feminine determination to prove herself justified in what she had done than from any vehement desire to persevere in her present course, she prepared herself mentally with a whole string of unanswerable arguments, of well-sounding sophistries with which to compel her old friend to acknowledge how exceptional was her position, how principle and self-respect, and unselfishness even, had driven her to this apparently undutiful step. It was still early when Rachel tapped at her mistress's door. "A letter, ma'am," she announced, as she came in. "A letter!" exclaimed Eugenia, not without excitement, "it must be a mistake. No one knows where--I mean, I have not sent my exact address yet." But notwithstanding her words, her heart beat with vague, unreasonable hope--what could it be?--could Sydney have found her out, and be coming to her at once?--could Beauchamp himself be on the way to beseech her to return to him, to entreat her forgiveness for all he had made her suffer, to assure her that this last misery, this worst trouble of all, had somehow or other been a mistake, a mischievous exaggeration of his sister's? As one possibility after another suggested itself to her imagination, Eugenia's heart beat faster and faster. "Give it me quickly, Rachel," she said impatiently. But as the girl brought it to her, she remarked, "It is not a letter by the post, ma'am. It is only a note--from the Spa Hotel, I believe," and Eugenia's hopes died within her. It was only a note--a few hurried words from Mr Thurston-- beginning "My dear Mrs Chancellor," to inform her of his being suddenly obliged to leave Nunswell on business, and to express his regret that he should not see her again. It was dated the previous evening. "As if he could have got any business letters after he saw me last night, and as if he would be likely to travel home about business on a Sunday," thought Eugenia, with a bitter incredulity; "no, he has just thought it over, and agrees with Frank. They don't want to have anything more to say to me." And this day was even more miserable than its predecessors. She would not go to church, she dreaded now even the thought of a stroll in the gardens; she sat alone in the dull drawing-room all day with no books to read, no letters to write, nothing to do, nothing to hope for. And when bedtime came and she knelt, more from the force of