d or
instinctive antagonism, we can be led into warm acknowledgement of merits
we have not sounded. This the Countess de Saldar knew right well.

Rose now intimated her wish to perform the ceremony of introduction
between her aunt and uncle present, and the visitors to Beckley Court.
The Countess smiled, and in the few paces that separated the two groups,
whispered to her brother: 'Miss Jocelyn, my dear.'

The eye-glasses of the Beckley group were dropped with one accord. The
ceremony was gone through. The softly-shadowed differences of a grand
manner addressed to ladies, and to males, were exquisitely accomplished
by the Countess de Saldar.

'Harrington? Harrington?' her quick ear caught on the mouth of Squire
Uplift, scanning Evan.

Her accent was very foreign, as she said aloud: 'We are entirely
strangers to your game--your creecket. My brother and myself are scarcely
English. Nothing save diplomacy are we adepts in!'

'You must be excessively dangerous, madam,' said Sir George, hat in air.

'Even in that, I fear, we are babes and sucklings, and might take many a
lesson from you. Will you instruct me in your creecket? What are they
doing now? It seems very unintelligible--indistinct--is it not?'

Inasmuch as Farmer Broadmead and Master Nat Hodges were surrounded by a
clamorous mob, shouting both sides of the case, as if the loudest and
longest-winded were sure to wrest a favourable judgement from those two
infallible authorities on the laws of cricket, the noble game was
certainly in a state of indistinctness.

The squire came forward to explain, piteously entreated not to expect too
much from a woman's inapprehensive wits, which he plainly promised (under
eyes that had melted harder men) he would not. His forbearance and
bucolic gallantry were needed, for he had the Countess's radiant full
visage alone. Her senses were dancing in her right ear, which had heard
the name of Lady Racial pronounced, and a voice respond to it from the
carriage.

Into what a pit had she suddenly plunged! You ask why she did not drive
away as fast as the horses would carry her, and fly the veiled head of
Demogorgon obscuring valley and hill and the shining firmament, and
threatening to glare destruction on her? You do not know an intriguer.
She relinquishes the joys of life for the joys of intrigue. This is her
element. The Countess did feel that the heavens were hard on her. She
resolved none the less to fight her way to her obj