, though! Yes-ah! Your poor
father wouldn't put his hand to it. Goren!'

Embarrassed, and not quite alive to the chapter of facts this name should
have opened to him, Evan bowed again.

'Goren!' continued the possessor of the name. He had a cracked voice,
that when he spoke a word of two syllables, commenced with a lugubrious
crow, and ended in what one might have taken for a curious question.

'It is a bad business brings me, young man. I 'm not the best messenger
for such tidings. It's a black suit, young man! It's your father!'

The diplomatist and his lady gradually edged back but Rose remained
beside the Countess, who breathed quick, and seemed to have lost her
self-command.

Thinking he was apprehended, Mr. Goren said: 'I 'm going down to-night to
take care of the shop. He 's to be buried in his old uniform. You had
better come with me by the night-coach, if you would see the last of him,
young man.'

Breaking an odd pause that had fallen, the Countess cried aloud,
suddenly:

'In his uniform!'

Mr. Goren felt his arm seized and his legs hurrying him some paces into
isolation. 'Thanks! thanks!' was murmured in his ear. 'Not a word more.
Evan cannot bear it. Oh! you are good to have come, and we are grateful.
My father! my father!'

She had to tighten her hand and wrist against her bosom to keep herself
up. She had to reckon in a glance how much Rose had heard, or divined.
She had to mark whether the Count had understood a syllable. She had to
whisper to Evan to hasten away with the horrible man.

She had to enliven his stunned senses, and calm her own. And with
mournful images of her father in her brain, the female Spartan had to
turn to Rose, and speculate on the girl's reflective brows, while she
said, as over a distant relative, sadly, but without distraction: 'A
death in the family!' and preserved herself from weeping her heart out,
that none might guess the thing who did not positively know it. Evan
touched the hand of Rose without meeting her eyes. He was soon cast off
in Mr. Goren's boat. Then the Countess murmured final adieux; twilight
under her lids, but yet a smile, stately, affectionate, almost genial.
Rose, her sweet Rose, she must kiss. She could have slapped Rose for
appearing so reserved and cold. She hugged Rose, as to hug oblivion of
the last few minutes into her. The girl leant her cheek, and bore the
embrace, looking on her with a kind of wonder.

Only when alone with the Count, in