'What an excellent thing!' she cried; all flushed and vehement.
'Arthur, you know you said how lonely she must be!'
'Is he worthy of her?' he said, slowly, finding his words with difficulty.
'Well, of course, we don't like him!—but then Uncle Findon does. And if he didn't, it's Eugénie that matters—isn't it?—only Eugénie! At her age, you can't be choosing her husband for her! Well, I never, never thought—Eugénie's so close!—she'd make up her mind to marry anybody!'
And she rattled on, in so much excitement that Welby hastily and urgently impressed discretion upon her.
But when she and Eugénie next met, Eugénie was astonished by her gaiety and good temper—her air of smiling mystery. Madame de Pastourelles hoped it meant real physical improvement, and would have liked to talk of it to Arthur; but all talk between them grew rarer and more difficult. Thus Eugénie's walks with Fenwick through the enchanted lands that surround Versailles became daily more significant, more watched. Lord Findon groaned in his sick-room, but still restrained himself.
It was a day—or rather a night—of late October—a wet and windy night, when the autumn leaves were coming down in swirling hosts on the lawns and paths of Trianon.
Fenwick was hard at work, in the small apartment which he occupied on the third floor of the Hôtel des Réservoirs. It consisted of a sitting-room and two bedrooms looking on an inner cour. One of the bedrooms he had turned into a sort of studio. It was now full of drawings and designs for the sumptuous London 'production' on which he was engaged—rooms at Versailles and Trianon—views in the Trianon gardens—fragments of decoration—designs for stage grouping—for the reproduction of one of the famous fêtes de nuit in the gardens of the 'Hameau'—studies of costume even.
His proud ambition hated the work; he thought it unworthy of him; only his poverty had consented. But he kept it out of sight of his companions as much as he could, and worked as much as possible at night.
And here and there, amongst the rest, were the sketches and fragments, often the grandiose fragments, which represented his 'buried life'—the life which only Eugénie de Pastourelles seemed now to have the power to evoke. When some hours of other work had weakened the impulse received from her, he would look at these things sadly, and put them aside.
To-night, as he drew, he was thinking incessantly of Eugénie; pierced often by intolerable remorse. But whose fault was it? Will you ask a man, perishing of need, to put its satisfaction from him? The tests of life are too hard. The plain, selfish man must always fail under them. Why act and speak as though he were responsible for what Nature and the flesh impose?