“I did not think you capable of it,” answered Beauchamp, slightly nettled. “I only said your manner might make other people think so if you did not take care. And there is another thing I want to say to you, Eugenia. It is really not absolutely necessary for you to tell everybody we meet that you have never been in Paris before. Those people I introduced to you to-day, for instance—Miss Fretville and her brother—I heard you telling them you had not only never been here before, but that you had never been out of England. What business is it of theirs? Why in the world should you expose our private affairs to every casual acquaintance?”
“I had no idea what I said could vex you,” said Eugenia, humbly, but with considerable astonishment. “Indeed, I could hardly have avoided it. Miss Fretville asked me if I did not think some street or other wonderfully improved by some new buildings—I forget what—and if I did not think the Empress had grown much stouter, and ever so many little things like that—you know the sort of things people make talk about at first—and I was obliged to say I had not been here before. Surely it would have been worse to have pretended I knew about things I had never seen? It is no crime never to have been out of England.”
There was a little spice of self-assertion in the last sentences which hardly accorded with Captain Chancellor’s notion of wifely submission.
“Crime!” he repeated. “Nonsense! You know quite well what I mean, only you are so exaggerated. Of course any one that knows you and the quiet way you have been brought up and all that, would not be surprised at your having seen so little; but there is a sort of bravado in decrying one’s antecedents unnecessarily, which appears to me the extreme of bad taste.”
“Truly, Beauchamp, I don’t understand you,” said Eugenia earnestly. “I am very sorry for having annoyed you,”—here her voice for the first time faltered a little—“I will try never to do so again in the same way, but—but I do think you fancy things a little. I was not thinking of my ‘antecedents’ in any way. I simply answered what I was asked. But I am very sorry—very, very sorry I vexed you.” The words came very brokenly now and the brown eyes grew suspiciously dewy.
“Never mind about it any more, then. There is nothing to look miserable about, you silly child,” said Beauchamp, beginning to think he had, perhaps, spoken too strongly. “Tears in your eyes! Oh, Eugenia, I believe you know you are irresistible when you cry! But don’t, dear, you really mustn’t. You would not wish me to be afraid of telling you any little thing that I should like you to alter?”
“No, of course not,” answered Eugenia, stifling her wounded feeling and endeavouring to smile in return for his caresses. “Of course not, but only—”
“But only you are a silly child,” said her husband, interrupting her. “By-the-bye, Eugenia, I have been quite surprised to hear how well you speak French; your accent is excellent. No one would suppose you had never been out of England unless you told it.”
“We had a French governess,” said Eugenia, “and it is very easy to learn to speak French fairly. Papa cared more about German. Of course German is more of a study than French; it opens the door to so much; so many books suffer in the translation.”
“Quite a mistake to put German before French,” said Captain Chancellor, decidedly. “French will carry you all over the Continent, and any girl who speaks it easily will do very well. There are plenty of English books to read on any subject that comes within a woman’s sphere.”