What could she give him, that such a nature most deeply needed?
Home, wifely love, and children--it was to these dear enwrapping powers she had committed him in what she had done.

She had feared for herself indeed.

But is it a sin to fear sin ?--the declension of one's own best will, the staining of one's purest feeling?
On her part she could proudly answer for herself.

Never since Welby's marriage, either in thought or act, had she given Arthur's wife the smallest just cause of offence.

Eugenie's was often an anxious and a troubled conscience; but not here, not in this respect.