icion imposed upon him a corresponding honesty toward her. He fell
into a blindness. Without dreaming for a moment that she designed to
encourage his passion for Rose, he yet beheld himself in the light she
had cast on him; and, received as her daughter's friend, it seemed to him
not so utterly monstrous that he might be her daughter's lover. A
haughty, a grand, or a too familiar manner, would have kept his eyes
clearer on his true condition. Lady Jocelyn spoke to his secret nature,
and eclipsed in his mind the outward aspects with which it was warring.
To her he was a gallant young man, a fit companion for Rose, and when she
and Sir Franks said, and showed him, that they were glad to know him, his
heart swam in a flood of happiness they little suspected.

This was another of the many forms of intoxication to which circumstances
subjected the poor lover. In Fallow field, among impertinent young men,
Evan's pride proclaimed him a tailor. At Beckley Court, acted on by one
genuine soul, he forgot it, and felt elate in his manhood. The shades of
Tailordom dispersed like fog before the full South-west breeze. When I
say he forgot it, the fact was present enough to him, but it became an
outward fact: he had ceased to feel it within him. It was not a portion
of his being, hard as Mrs. Mel had struck to fix it. Consequently, though
he was in a far worse plight than when he parted with Rose on board the
Jocasta, he felt much less of an impostor now. This may have been partly
because he had endured his struggle with the Demogorgon the Countess
painted to him in such frightful colours, and found him human after all;
but it was mainly owing to the hearty welcome Lady Jocelyn had extended
to him as the friend of Rose.

Loving Rose, he nevertheless allowed his love no tender liberties. The
eyes of a lover are not his own; but his hands and lips are, till such
time as they are claimed. The sun must smile on us with peculiar warmth
to woo us forth utterly-pluck our hearts out. Rose smiled on many. She
smiled on Drummond Forth, Ferdinand Laxley, William Harvey, and her
brother Harry; and she had the same eyes for all ages. Once, previous to
the arrival of the latter three, there was a change in her look, or Evan
fancied it. They were going to ride out together, and Evan, coming to his
horse on the gravel walk, saw her talking with Drummond Forth. He
mounted, awaiting her, and either from a slight twinge of jealousy, or to
mark her daint