parting had been spoken, the link violently snapped.

Mr. John Raikes had been picked up and pulled away by Polly. She now
rushed to Evan: 'Good-bye, and God bless you, dear Mr. Harrington.
I'll find means of letting you know how she is. And he shan't have her,
mind!'

Rose was walking by Laxley's side, but not leaning on his arm. Evan
blessed her for this. Ere she was out of sight the fly rolled down the
street. She did not heed it, did not once turn her head. Ah, bitter
unkindness!

When Love is hurt, it is self-love that requires the opiate. Conning
gave it him in the form of a note in a handwriting not known to him. It
said:

'I do not believe it, and nothing will ever make me.
'JULIANA.'

Evan could not forget these words. They coloured his farewell to
Beckley: the dear old downs, the hopgardens, the long grey farms walled
with clipped yew, the home of his lost love! He thought of them through
weary nights when the ghostly image with the hard shut eyelids and the
quivering lips would rise and sway irresolutely in air till a shape out
of the darkness extinguished it. Pride is the God of Pagans. Juliana had
honoured his God. The spirit of Juliana seemed to pass into the body of
Rose, and suffer for him as that ghostly image visibly suffered.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. IN WHICH WE HAVE TO SEE IN THE DARK

So ends the fourth act of our comedy.

After all her heroism and extraordinary efforts, after, as she feared,
offending Providence--after facing Tailordom--the Countess was rolled
away in a dingy fly unrewarded even by a penny, for what she had gone
through. For she possessed eminently the practical nature of her sex;
and though she would have scorned, and would have declined to handle
coin so base, its absence was upbraidingly mentioned in her spiritual
outcries. Not a penny!

Nor was there, as in the miseries of retreat she affected indifferently
to imagine, a Duke fished out of the ruins of her enterprise, to wash
the mud off her garments and edge them with radiance. Caroline, it
became clear to her, had been infected by Evan's folly. Caroline, she
subsequently learnt, had likewise been a fool. Instead of marvelling at
the genius that had done so much in spite of the pair of fools that
were the right and left wing of her battle array, the simple-minded lady
wept. She wanted success, not genius. Admiration she was ever ready to
forfeit for success.

Nor did she say to the tailors