But she had never felt so clearly the inexorable limits of her influence with him.

This morning, just as of old, he had thrown himself tempestuously upon her advice, her sympathy; and she had given him counsel as she best could.

But a woman knows when her counsel is likely to be followed, or no.

Eugenie had no illusions.

In his sore, self-tormented state he was, she saw, at the mercy of any passing idea, of anything that seemed to offer him vengeance on his enemies, or the satisfaction of a vanity that writhed under the failure he was all the time inviting and assuring.
Yet as she thought of him, she liked him better than ever.