Rather to Beauchamp's surprise, for he fancied his uncalled-for remark-- in reality greatly the result of the ill-tempered mood he had felt coming over him ever since he saw that the elder Thurston made one of the party--had offended her, Eugenia seemed by no means averse to this two-and-two arrangement. _He_ felt uncomfortable and annoyed. It was the very first time he was conscious of having appeared to this girl in even ever so slightly unfavourable a light, and he felt anxious to destroy the unpleasant impression; he was not likely to see much more of her, and he hated any one to remember him with any disagreeable association. But how to begin the smoothing-over process he felt rather at a loss. To his surprise, Eugenia herself helped him. "Captain Chancellor," she said, suddenly, speaking faster than usual, as if to force back some hesitation, "I want to tell you I think Frank Thurston was right in what he said just now, and you were right to agree with him. I do speak at random, sometimes; and I shouldn't have encouraged Bob to joke as I did. Of course, any one else could see there was no irreverence in my mind; but a child might not, and one can't be too careful with children. I think I quite understand your disliking it, and I am so sorry." She looked up in his face with a deprecating humility, a sweet softness in her brown eyes that he had never seen in them before. Never had he thought her so charming. He did not attend to the exact meaning of her words, most certainly no anxiety as to the nature of the impressions left on the infant mind of Master Bob had troubled him; he was conscious only of an inference of apology in what she said, and of acknowledgment of his superior judgment that was very agreeable to him and very becoming to her. The "I am so sorry" at the end was quite delicious. "Dear little thing," he said to himself, "it would not be difficult to mould her into one's own pattern." And aloud, he said, with the half deferential tenderness so curiously attractive to very young girls,-- "You are too good, Miss Laurence; a great deal too good. I have certainly rather strong feelings--prejudices, if you like--on some subjects, but I really feel it is more than good of you not to have resented my inexcusable expression of them." "Don't say that," she remonstrated, gently; "I do not feel it so at all. When any one finds fault with me, on the contrary, I feel that it must--that they must--" she hesitated. "That it must arise from no common interest in you?" he suggested. "And can you ever have doubted _my_ feeling such, Miss Laurence? No one, I suppose, is quite perfection; but surely you must know that to me you appear so near it that a word or a tone which I should never notice in another woman, from you acquires importance."