"So you have come back at last, Beauchamp!" she said, as she drew near him. "I was very nearly setting off home this morning, I can tell you. I wonder what you asked me to come to see you for!" Her pettishness was quite lost on her brother. "Gertrude," he said, excitedly, as if he had not heard her words, "do you not know, or _do_ you know about Eugenia? What has happened?" "What has happened?" she repeated, looking a little startled; "nothing that I know of, except that she has gone to her friends at Wareborough-- her sister, or aunt, or somebody--for a day or two. I suppose she often goes there, does she not? though I certainly thought she might have waited till my visit was over." "Is _that_ all you know?" said Beauchamp, impatiently. "Do you not know with what intention she left this--that she went, never to return?" "Good gracious!" exclaimed Mrs Eyrecourt, now for the first time taking alarm. "You don't mean to say she has run away--run away _with_ some one? How frightful! What a scandal! Oh, Beauchamp, how terribly you have been deceived!" "Take care what you say, Gertrude," said Captain Chancellor, sternly. "Run away _with_ any one--my wife--Eugenia! What are you thinking of? Read that!" He thrust into her hand the letter he had found on his mantelpiece, and while watching her read it, he almost laughed, not with standing his distress, at the utter incompatibility of his sister's coarsely commonplace supposition with the perfect guilelessness, the transparency and innocence, he had often been half inclined to look upon as but a part of his wife's childishness and inexperience. Eugenia's note to her husband was as follows:-- "I am going away because I am too hopeless and miserable to bear my life longer. Hitherto I have clung to hope and to you through all my suffering, believing that at least you _had_ loved me. Now I know the whole bitter truth. I am going to my own friends. I will agree to any arrangements you like to make, but I do not want any money, except what I have of my own. I cannot think that you will in any way miss me, but I trust you will be happier without me than you have been with me. "Eugenia." Mrs Eyrecourt did not speak when she had finished reading this. Beauchamp, observing her closely, fancied she looked pale and frightened. "Can you explain any of this to me?" he asked, impatiently. "Has anything happened in my absence, to explain it? Or must I think she has gone out of her mind?" Gertrude hesitated a little. "There was--we had a rather disagreeable conversation the day you left," she began. "I don't know who in the world could have put it in her head--_truly_ I don't, Beauchamp--but all of a sudden Eugenia challenged me with having been the cause of your _not_ marrying Roma, and by some peculiar reasoning of her own, from that she went on to argue that I was the cause of your hasty proposal to her, which she seems to look upon as the misfortune of her life."