tmanteau packed, in with me, my dear brother; Conning
has her feet on it. I divined that I should overtake you.'

Evan felt he was in the toils. After a struggle or two he yielded; and,
having yielded, did it with grace. In a moment, and with a power of
self-compression equal to that of the adept Countess, he threw off his
moodiness as easily as if it had been his Spanish mantle, and assumed a
gaiety that made the Countess's eyes beam rapturously upon him, and was
pleasing to Rose, apart from the lead in admiration the Countess had
given her--not for the first time. We mortals, the best of us, may be
silly sheep in our likes and dislikes: where there is no premeditated
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