‘Eugenie!’ he broke out.  ’I don’t think he ought to come so much.  Forgive me, dear!’

‘You only think what I have thought for a long time,’ she said, in a low voice, without raising her eyes.  ‘But to-day I sent for him.’

’Because?’—­Lord Findon’s face expressed a quick and tender anxiety.

‘I want to persuade him—­to marry Elsie Bligh.’

Lord Findon made a hurried exclamation, drew her to him, kissed her on the brow, and then, releasing her, turned away.

‘I might have known—­what you would do,’ he said, in a muffled voice.

‘I ought to have done it long ago,’ she said, passionately; then, immediately curbing herself, she turned deliberately to a vase of roses that stood near and began to rearrange them, picking out a few faded blooms and throwing them on the wood-fire.

Lord Findon watched her, the delicate, drooping figure in its grey dress, the thin hand among the roses.

’Eugenie!—­tell me one thing!—­you are in the same mind as ever about the divorce?’

She made a sign of assent.

’Just the same.  I am Albert’s wife—­unless he himself asks me to release him—­and then the release would only be—­for him.’

‘You are too hard on yourself, Eugenie!’ cried Lord Findon.  ’I vow you are!  You set an impossible standard.’

’I am his wife’—­she repeated, gently—­’while he lives.  And if he sent for me—­at any hour of the day or night—­I would go.’

Lord Findon gave an angry sigh.

‘You can’t wonder, Eugenie,’ he said, impetuously, ’that I often wish his death.’

A shudder ran through her.

‘Don’t, papa!  Never, never wish that.  He loves life so.’

‘Yes!—­now that he has ruined yours.’

‘He didn’t mean to,’ she said, almost inaudibly.  ’You know what I think.’

Lord Findon restrained himself.  In his eyes there was no excuse whatever for his scoundrel of a son-in-law, who after six years of marriage had left his wife for an actress, and was now living with another woman of his own class, a Comtesse S., ten years older than himself.  He knew that Eugenie believed her husband to be insane; as for him, he had never admitted anything of the kind.  But if it comforted her to believe it, let her, for Heaven’s sake, believe it—­poor child!

So he said nothing—­as he paced up and down—­and Eugenie finished the rearrangement of the roses.  Then she turned to him, smiling.

‘You didn’t know I saw Elsie yesterday?’

‘Did she confide in you?’

‘Oh, that—­long ago!  The poor child’s dreadfully in love.’

‘Then it’s a great responsibility,’ said Lord Findon, gravely.  ’How is he going to satisfy her?’

‘Only too easily.  She would marry him blindly—­on any terms.’

There was a short silence.  Then Eugenie gathered up the letter she had been reading when her father entered.