l, I shall never have to punish you in this way, my love, he said
fondly, and Caroline dropped her eyelids.

'Don't think that I am blaming her,' he added, trying to feel as honestly
as he spoke. 'I was mad to come here. I see it all now. Let us keep to
our place. We are all the same before God till we disgrace ourselves.'
Possibly with that sense of shame which some young people have who are
not professors of sounding sentences, or affected by missionary zeal,
when they venture to breathe the holy name, Evan blushed, and walked on
humbly silent. Caroline murmured: 'Yes, yes! oh, brother!' and her figure
drew to him as if for protection. Pale, she looked up.

'Shall you always love me, Evan?'

'Whom else have I to love?'

'But always--always? Under any circumstances?'

'More and more, dear. I always have, and shall. I look to you now. I have
no home but in your heart now.'

She was agitated, and he spoke warmly to calm her.

The throb of deep emotion rang in her rich voice. 'I will live any life
to be worthy of your love, Evan,' and she wept.

To him they were words and tears without a history.

Nothing further passed between them. Caroline went to the Countess: Evan
waited for Rose. The sun was getting high. The face of the stream glowed
like metal. Why did she not come? She believed him guilty from the mouth
of another? If so, there was something less for him to lose. And now the
sacrifice he had made did whisper a tale of mortal magnificence in his
ears: feelings that were not his noblest stood up exalted. He waited till
the warm meadow-breath floating past told that the day had settled into
heat, and then he waited no more, but quietly walked into the house with
the strength of one who has conquered more than human scorn.

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE RETREAT FROM BECKLEY

Never would the Countess believe that brother of hers, idiot as by nature
he might be, and heir to unnumbered epithets, would so far forget what
she had done for him, as to drag her through the mud for nothing: and so
she told Caroline again and again, vehemently.

It was about ten minutes before the time for descending to the
breakfast-table. She was dressed, and sat before the glass, smoothing her
hair, and applying the contents of a pot of cold cream to her forehead
between-whiles. With perfect sincerity she repeated that she could not
believe it. She had only trusted Evan once since their visit to Beckley;
and that this once he sho