The trance was broken.
'I do, indeed, want to talk to you,' she said, in her gentlest voice.
'We shan't have very long.

Papa wants me in half an hour.' She motioned to the seat beside her; and their talk began.
* * * * * Lord Findon sat alone in his study on the ground-floor, balancing a paper-knife on one finger, fidgeting with a newspaper of which he never read a word, and otherwise beguiling the time until the sound of Welby's step on the stairs should tell him that the interview upstairs was over.
His mind was full of disagreeable thoughts.

Eugenie was dearer to him than any other human being, and Welby--his ward, the orphan child of one of his oldest friends--had been from his boyhood almost a son of the house.

Eight years before, what more natural than that these two should marry?
Welby had been then deeply in love; Eugenie in her first maiden bloom had been difficult to read, but a word from the father she adored would probably have been enough to incline her towards her lover, to transform and fire a friendship which was already more romantic than she knew.

But Lord Findon could not make up his mind to it.