Also--significant sign of the strength of all her personal affections!--in addition to the moral and physical strain she had undergone, she had suffered much about this time from the loss of her maid, an old servant and devoted friend, who left her shortly after M.de Pastourelles' death--incited, forced thereto by Eugenie--in order to marry and go out to Canada.

Eugenie had missed her sorely; and insensibly, the struggle to get well had been the harder.

The doctors ordered travel and change, and she had wandered from place to place; only half-conscious, as it often seemed to her; the most docile of patients; accompanied now by one member of the family, now by another; standing as it were, like the bather who has wandered too far from shore, between the onward current which means destruction, and that backward struggle of the will which leads to life.

And little by little the tide of being had turned.

After a winter in Egypt, strength had begun to come back; since then Switzerland and high air had quickened recovery; and now, physically, Eugenie was almost herself again.
But morally, she retained a deep and lasting impress of what she had gone through.