The Europeans

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"They are spending the evening with my mother."

"Is not the thing very sudden?"

Acton looked up. "Extremely sudden. There had been a tacit
understanding; but within a day or two Clifford appears to have received
some mysterious impulse to precipitate the affair."

"The impulse," said the Baroness, "was the charms of your very pretty
sister."

"But my sister's charms were an old story; he had always known her."
Acton had begun to experiment again.

Here, however, it was evident the Baroness would not help him. "Ah, one
can't say! Clifford is very young; but he is a nice boy."

"He 's a likeable sort of boy, and he will be a rich man." This was
Acton's last experiment. Madame Munster turned away.

She made but a short visit and Felix took her home. In her little
drawing-room she went almost straight to the mirror over the
chimney-piece, and, with a candle uplifted, stood looking into it. "I
shall not wait for your marriage," she said to her brother. "To-morrow
my maid shall pack up."

"My dear sister," Felix exclaimed, "we are to be married immediately!
Mr. Brand is too uncomfortable."

But Eugenia, turning and still holding her candle aloft, only looked
about the little sitting-room at her gimcracks and curtains and
cushions. "My maid shall pack up," she repeated. "Bonte divine, what
rubbish! I feel like a strolling actress; these are my 'properties.'"

"Is the play over, Eugenia?" asked Felix.

She gave him a sharp glance. "I have spoken my part."

"With great applause!" said her brother.

"Oh, applause--applause!" she murmured. And she gathered up two or three
of her dispersed draperies. She glanced at the beautiful brocade, and
then, "I don't see how I can have endured it!" she said.

"Endure it a little longer. Come to my wedding."

"Thank you; that 's your affair. My affairs are elsewhere."

"Where are you going?"

"To Germany--by the first ship."

"You have decided not to marry Mr. Acton?"

"I have refused him," said Eugenia.

Her brother looked at her in silence. "I am sorry," he rejoined at last.
"But I was very discreet, as you asked me to be. I said nothing."

"Please continue, then, not to allude to the matter," said Eugenia.

Felix inclined himself gravely. "You shall be obeyed. But your position
in Germany?" he pursued.

"Please to make no observations upon it."

"I was only going to say that I supposed it was altered."

"You are mistaken."

"But I thought you had signed"--

"I have not signed!" said the Baroness.

Felix urged her no further, and it was arranged that he should
immediately assist her to embark.

Mr. Brand was indeed, it appeared, very impatient to consummate his
sacrifice and deliver the nuptial benediction which would set it off so
handsomely; but Eugenia's impatience to withdraw from a country in which
she had not found the fortune she had come to seek was even less to be
mistaken. It is true she had not made any very various exertion; but
she appeared to feel justified in generalizing--in deciding that the
conditions of action on this provincial continent were not favorable
to really superior women. The elder world was, after all, their natural
field. The unembarrassed directness with which she proceeded to
apply these intelligent conclusions appeared to the little circle of
spectators who have figured in our narrative but the supreme exhibition
of a character to which the experience of life had imparted an
inimitable pliancy. It had a distinct effect upon Robert Acton, who, for
the two days preceding her departure, was a very restless and irritated
mortal. She passed her last evening at her uncle's, where she had never
been more charming; and in parting with Clifford Wentworth's affianced
bride she drew from her own finger a curious old ring and presented it
to her with the prettiest speech and kiss. Gertrude, who as an affianced
bride was also indebted to her gracious bounty, admired this little
incident extremely, and Robert Acton almost wondered whether it did not
give him the right, as Lizzie's brother and guardian, to offer in return
a handsome present to the Baroness. It would have made him extremely
happy to be able to offer a handsome present to the Baroness; but he
abstained from this expression of his sentiments, and they were in
consequence, at the very last, by so much the less comfortable. It was
almost at the very last that he saw her--late the night before she went
to Boston to embark.

"For myself, I wish you might have stayed," he said. "But not for your
own sake."

"I don't make so many differences," said the Baroness. "I am simply
sorry to be going."

"That 's a much deeper difference than mine," Acton declared; "for you
mean you are simply glad!"

Felix parted with her on the deck of the ship. "We shall often meet over
there," he said.

"I don't know," she answered. "Europe seems to me much larger than
America."

Mr. Brand, of course, in the days that immediately followed, was not the
only impatient spirit; but it may be said that of all the young spirits
interested in the event none rose more eagerly to the level of the
occasion. Gertrude left her father's house with Felix Young; they were
imperturbably happy and they went far away. Clifford and his young wife
sought their felicity in a narrower circle, and the latter's influence
upon her husband was such as to justify, strikingly, that theory of the
elevating effect of easy intercourse with clever women which Felix had
propounded to Mr. Wentworth. Gertrude was for a good while a distant
figure, but she came back when Charlotte married Mr. Brand. She was
present at the wedding feast, where Felix's gayety confessed to no
change. Then she disappeared, and the echo of a gayety of her own,
mingled with that of her husband, often came back to the home of her
earlier years. Mr. Wentworth at last found himself listening for it;
and Robert Acton, after his mother's death, married a particularly nice
young girl.

The End