power, unaided by family-portraits, coats-of-arms, ball-room
practice, and at least one small phial of Essence of Society, to make a
Gentleman.

CHAPTER XLIV

CONTAINS A WARNING TO ALL CONSPIRATORS

This, if you have done me the favour to read it aright, has been a
chronicle of desperate heroism on the part of almost all the principal
personages represented. But not the Countess de Saldar, scaling the
embattled fortress of Society; nor Rose, tossing its keys to her lover
from the shining turret-tops; nor Evan, keeping bright the lamp of
self-respect in his bosom against South wind and East; none excel friend
Andrew Cogglesby, who, having fallen into Old Tom's plot to humiliate his
wife and her sisters, simply for Evan's sake, and without any distinct
notion of the terror, confusion, and universal upset he was bringing on
his home, could yet, after a scared contemplation of the scene when he
returned from his expedition to Fallow field, continue to wear his rueful
mask; and persevere in treacherously outraging his lofty wife.

He did it to vindicate the ties of blood against accidents of position.
Was he justified? I am sufficiently wise to ask my own sex alone.

On the other side, be it said (since in our modern days every hero must
have his weak heel), that now he had gone this distance it was difficult
to recede. It would be no laughing matter to tell his solemn Harriet that
he had been playing her a little practical joke. His temptations to give
it up were incessant and most agitating; but if to advance seemed
terrific, there was, in stopping short, an awfulness so overwhelming that
Andrew abandoned himself to the current, his real dismay adding to his
acting powers.

The worst was, that the joke was no longer his: it was Old Tom's. He
discovered that he was in Old Tom's hands completely. Andrew had thought
that he would just frighten the women a bit, get them down to Lymport for
a week or so, and then announce that matters were not so bad with the
Brewery as he had feared; concluding the farce with a few domestic
fireworks. Conceive his dismay when he entered the house, to find there a
man in possession.

Andrew flew into such a rage that he committed an assault on the man. So
ungovernable was his passion, that for some minutes Harriet's measured
voice summoned him from over the banisters above, quite in vain. The
miserable Englishman refused to be taught that his house had ceased to be
his castle. It