But matrimonial anarchy was not to be justified, any more than social anarchy, by the failures and drawbacks of arrangements which were on the whole for people's good.

_Passe encore_!--if Fenwick had only fulfilled the promise of his youth!--were at least a successful artist, instead of promising to become a quarrelsome failure! Now if Arthur himself were free! Supposing this poor girl were to succumb ?--what then?
At this point Lord Findon checked himself roughly, and a minute afterwards was shaking Welby by the hand and stooping with an old man's courtesy over the invalid carriage in which Mrs.Welby lay reclined.
Euphrosyne, indeed, had shed her laughter! A face with sunken eyes and drawn lips, and with that perpetual suspicious furrow in the brow, which meant a terror lest any movement or jar should let loose the enemy, pain; an emaciated body, from which all the soft mouldings of youth had departed; a frail hand, lying in mute appeal on the shawl with which she was covered:--this was now Elsie Welby, whose beauty in the first years of her marriage had been one of the adornments of London.
Eugenie was bending over her, and Mrs.Welby was pettishly answering.
'It's so stiff and formal.

I don't admire this kind of thing.

And there isn't a bit of shade on this terrace.

_I_ think it's ugly!' Welby laid a hand on hers, smiling.
'But to-day, Bebe, you like the sun ?--in October ?' Mrs.Welby was very decidedly of opinion that even in October there was a glare--and in August--she shuddered to think of it! It was so tiresome, too, to have missed the Grandes Eaux.