o melt the manliest
resolutions. The glass showed her that her face was pathetically pale;
the tones of her voice were rich and harrowing. What did they avail with
a brother? 'Promise me,' she cried eagerly, 'promise me to stop here--on
this spot-till I return.'

The promise was extracted. The Countess went to fetch Caroline. Evan did
not count the minutes. One thought was mounting in his brain-the scorn
of Rose. He felt that he had lost her. Lost her when he had just won
her! He felt it, without realizing it. The first blows of an immense
grief are dull, and strike the heart through wool, as it were. The
belief of the young in their sorrow has to be flogged into them, on the
good old educational principle. Could he do less than this he was about
to do? Rose had wedded her noble nature to him, and it was as much her
spirit as his own that urged him thus to forfeit her, to be worthy of
her by assuming unworthiness.

There he sat neither conning over his determination nor the cause for
it, revolving Rose's words about Laxley, and nothing else. The words
were so sweet and so bitter; every now and then the heavy smiting on his
heart set it quivering and leaping, as the whip starts a jaded horse.

Meantime the Countess was participating in a witty conversation in the
drawing-room with Sir John and the Duke, Miss Current, and others; and
it was not till after she had displayed many graces, and, as one or two
ladies presumed to consider, marked effrontery, that she rose and drew
Caroline away with her. Returning to her dressing-room, she found that
Evan had faithfully kept his engagement; he was on the exact spot where
she had left him.

Caroline came to him swiftly, and put her hand to his forehead that she
might the better peruse his features, saying, in her mellow caressing
voice: 'What is this, dear Van, that you will do? Why do you look so
wretched?'

'Has not Louisa told you?'

'She has told me something, dear, but I don't know what it is. That you
are going to expose us? What further exposure do we need? I'm sure, Van,
my pride--what I had--is gone. I have none left!'

Evan kissed her brows warmly. An explanation, full of the Countess's
passionate outcries of justification, necessity, and innocence in higher
than fleshly eyes, was given, and then the three were silent.

'But, Van,' Caroline commenced, deprecatingly, 'my darling! of what
use--now! Whether right or wrong, why should you, why should you, when
the