"No, yes. I mean you are always good," answered Eugenia. "I am very happy to-day, and I always feel as if I should thank you when I feel so." Roma looked up with a grateful look in her dark eyes. ("It is nice of you to say so, but I don't deserve it," she interrupted. "Yes you do," said Eugenia, and then went on with what she had been speaking about.) "It was something Beauchamp said this morning that made me happy. I needn't tell you it all, but just a little. He asked me, Roma, if I didn't think we were getting to be very happy together, and he said, `At least, Eugenia, you make _me_ very happy, and I think I am getting to understand you and your ways of thinking about things better. I am learning to see how selfish I was--a while ago, you know. But I trust all that is over.' Then he said something else, I don't know what put it into his head--something about baby and how we should bring him up, and the future. Roma," she broke off, suddenly, "if Beauchamp were to die now I should miss him terribly. I am so _glad_ to feel so, for there was a time when I _couldn't_, when my life stretched before me like a long slavery. Don't think me wicked to speak so--you understand me?" "Understand you, dear Eugenia? Yes, thoroughly," said Roma. "And years and years hence I trust and believe you will feel as you say you do now, yet more strongly. I don't think the sort of happiness you feel is likely to fade or lessen," she sighed, half unconsciously as she spoke. Eugenia looked at her affectionately. She seemed on the point of saying something more, but changed her mind and, kissing Roma again, left the room. How it came about they could neither of them in all probability have exactly related. They went the long walk Miss Eyrecourt had determined upon; they talked of every general subject under the skies, avoiding at first, as if by tacit mutual consent, any of closer personal interest. But after a while, somehow, Mr Thurston came to talking of himself, of his life, his hopes, his disappointments and failures. He was not by any means an egotistical man. Roma could not but feel flattered, by his confidence; she listened with undisguised interest. Suddenly, to her surprise, he alluded to the first time they had met. "It is curious to look back now to that evening, is it not?" he said. "You were the first lady I had spoken to for, I may say, years. Out there I was completely cut off from any intercourse of the kind. And what a fool (I beg your pardon, Miss Eyrecourt) you must have thought me! Do you remember how I bored you with my confidences? I assure you I never remember our conversation without feeling inclined to blush, only you were so very kind--_that_ part of it," he added, in a somewhat lower tone, "I don't want to forget."