"She has been so much happier lately, Roma," poor Beauchamp would say, in his yearning for consolation and sympathy. "She was saying so herself just the other day. I am a coarse selfish creature compared with her. No one but I knows thoroughly how innocent, and true, and unselfish she is, and I took a long time to find it out--I can't forgive myself when I think of that time--but lately I do think I have got to understand her better, and to make her happier. Don't you think so, Roma? _She_ said so herself, you know." And Roma would agree with him, and say whatever she could think of in the way of comfort--a dozen times, a day, for Beauchamp followed her about in a touchingly helpless, dependent sort of manner, as if in her presence alone he found his anxiety endurable. A dozen times a day, too, he would appeal to whichever doctor was on the spot, almost entreating for a word of hope or comfort. "I fancy she is lying more quietly just now," he would say; or, "Don't you think the expression of her face is calmer, more like itself?" It was very hard to be unable to agree with him, but weary days, and still wearier nights, went by before either doctors or friends thought it would be any but cruel kindness to allow him to hope. At last, however--a long of coming "at last" it was--there crept into sight the first faint flutter of improvement; slowly, very slowly, life and consciousness returned to the all but dying wife, and after a new phase of anxiety, scarcely less trying than the first, the verdict was pronounced, "There is hope--the greatest danger to be apprehended in the way of recovery has been safely past--there is every reasonable ground for hope." And then, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, Eugenia crept back to her place in the world, to the place which it had seemed all but certain would be vacant for evermore. Her extreme patience, her tranquil gentleness, had much to do with her recovery, said the authorities. And those who knew her best--Gerald and Roma, and Sydney when she came--knew her excitable impetuosity, her impatience of inaction, marvelled somewhat at this new revelation of her character. "You are so good, Eugenia," said Roma, one day when she was alone with the patient, still forced to lie motionless and unemployed, forbidden even to use her eyes or to talk much. "I cannot think how you have learnt to bear these long weeks of suffering, or at least tedium, so cheerfully."