You see he writes extremely well--and it amuses me.' Privately, he thought that if she encouraged him beyond a very moderate point, Fenwick would soon become troublesome.

But whenever she pleaded that anything 'amused' her, he could never find a word to say.
Every now and then he watched her, furtively trying to pierce that grey veil in which she had wrapt herself.

To-morrow morning, he supposed, he should hear her step on the stairs, towards eight o'clock--should hear it passing his door in going, and an hour later in coming back--and should know that she had been to a little Ritualist church close by, where what Lady Findon called 'fooleries' went on, in the shape of 'daily celebrations' and 'vestments' and 'reservation.' How lightly she stepped; what a hidden act it was; never spoken of, except once, between him and her! It puzzled him often; for he knew very well that Eugenie was no follower of things received.

She had been a friend of Renan and of Taine in her French days; and he, who was a Gallic with a leaning to the Anglican Church, had sometimes guessed with discomfort that Eugenie was in truth what his Low Church wife called a 'free-thinker.' She never spoke of her opinions, directly, even to him.

But the books she ordered from Paris, or Germany, and every now and then the things she let fall about them, were enough for any shrewd observer.