g to her. She welcomed Evan as her
daughter's friend, walked half-way across the room to meet him on his
introduction to her, and with the simple words, 'I have heard of you,'
let him see that he stood upon his merits in her house. The young man's
spirit caught something of hers even in their first interview, and at
once mounted to that level. Unconsciously he felt that she took, and
would take him, for what he was, and he rose to his worth in the society
she presided over. A youth like Evan could not perceive, that in loving
this lady's daughter, and accepting the place she offered him, he was
guilty of a breach of confidence; or reflect, that her entire absence of
suspicion 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