"that indeed she was a better wife than most
girls would have been to any one so cross and
disagreeable as Charles; and that Mrs.
Fitzgerald had better speak to him about his
temper than to her about hers."

However, Mrs. Fitzgerald's mere presence
was a comfort to her son; and he got calmer
and milder now that he could speak of
his sufferings, and that some one cared to
soothe them away. At first Eveline, being
awed in spite of herself by Mrs. Fitzgerald,
behaved with some small attention to appearances,
so that the young household sat in the
sunshine again. Horace Graham, too,
happened to go away just at this moment;
consequently a conjunction of favourable stars
seemed to shed rays of domestic happiness
over the gaudy, meretricious household.

But Horace came back one Thursday afternoon,
and Eveline invited him to dinner.
She pressed him to come when, as usual,
he refused for the childish pleasure of being
entreated. Charles had a nervous attack
when he heard this, and then gave way to so
terrible a fit of passion in Eveline's dressing-
room, that he showed at last how obnoxious
the young guardsman was to him. Eveline
every now and then looked at him with
flashes of scorn and contempt which may be
called deadly. At last turning from him with
a spurning action, she said, " Charles, if I had
known you as I do now, not twice ten
thousand a-year would have tempted me to
marry you: you are not like a man. You
are worse than a child or a woman!" Then
she went on arranging the most becoming
toilette her busy fancy could devise.

Charles conquered himself at last, and
managed to appear at dinner with some show
of calmness. Eveline was so extremely gay
that she became quite overpowering. She
armed herself with all the little graceful
coquetries she knew so well how to employ,
each in their right time and place, and
heightened them in revenge for her late
enforced cessation from all excitement while
grudgingly going through the dull task of
pleasing a sick husband and a rigid matron.
Even Mrs, Fitzgerald, who had expected much,
was surprised at the open manner in which her
flirtation with Graham went on; and, although
believing it to be nothing more real than the
folly of a vain girl, yet she could not deny
its grave appearance, nor the compromise
that it made of her son's honour. She determined
to speak to Eveline seriously, and to
endeavour—by arguments, if affection were
of no use; by threats, if arguments fell dead
—to open her eyes to the true knowledge of
herself and her conduct, and to force her to
abandon a farce that might end in tragedy.
Eveline seemed to foresee this lecture; for
nothing could induce her to meet Mrs.
Fitzgerald's eyes. She shrank from her words
and drowned them in thick showers of banter
with Horace; in her behaviour to whom there
was a kind of defiance and bravado, that
betrayed as much fear of the future as
indifference of the present.

In the evening they strolled out into the
little garden; for they boasted a plot of
blackened ground dignified by that sweet
name of fruits and flowers—Eveline and
Horace wandering away together, and Charles
and his mother returning soon to the house.
Speaking to his mother of Eveline, a flash of
his old tenderness returned, and with it his
old hatred to believe in evil. After all,
Eveline was young and giddy. She meant
no harm, and did not know the full
significance of what she did. She was his wife too
—she must be gently dealt with. He could
not bear to hear her condemned. When
his mother replied to him, he shrank
nervously from every subject which threatened
to lead to a discussion on her conduct. Mrs.
Fitzgerald read his heart, and kept silent.
But while he was thus careful, he was also
haunted, restless and tormented; and at last,
unable to contain himself, he went into the
garden, where the shadows had deepened into
darkness, walking slowly and silently towards
the quiet trees planted to hide the upper
wall. Horace and Eveline were there, seated
on a bench together. They were talking low,
but talking love—if such frothy vanity could
be called love—and " dearest Horace," and
"beloved Eveline," were often mingled with
their talk. They sat, like two silly children,
hand in hand.

Charles stole back to the house, and entered
—a creature from whom life and soul had
departed. Eveline had seen him: and he
knew that she had seen him. There was
no more disguise; and, as she said, " discovery
had at least spared her the necessity
of deception." She threw off the flimsy veil
she had hitherto worn, and boasted openly of
her love for Horace; still coupling it with
perfect innocency. Which was true. For
indeed she was too shallow and too
intrinsically selfish to commit herself, even
where she loved.

After this discovery, and the distressing
scene between the husband and wife which
followed it, Eveline went out more than
ever, and was with Horace more than ever
also; many pitying her for being married
to a jealous irritable fool, and lamenting
that such a lovely young creature should
have been so sacrificed by an ambitious
mother, against her own expressed inclinations;
many more deploring her wayward,
systematic neglect of her husband.

Charles Fitzgerald's eccentricities of temper
—his bursts of passion and of violence,
mingled with fits of silence and of gloom—
became every day more marked. Even his
mother was no longer a soothing or a restraining
influence; but, capricious, violent, irritable
and uncertain, he made his home a Hades for
others, as his wife had made his life a torment
for him. At last his language became,
occasionally, so bitter and infuriated; and,