been railing and jeering at the Countess de Saldar, the clever
outwitted exposed adventuress, at Elburne House and Beckley Court. What
did the crowing cleverer aristocrats think of her now?

On Rose the blow fell bitterly. Was Evan also a foul schemer? Was he of
a piece with his intriguing sister? His close kinship with the Countess
had led her to think baseness possible to him when it was confessed by
his own mouth once. She heard black names cast at him and the whole of
the great Mel's brood, and incapable of quite disbelieving them merited,
unable to challenge and rebut them, she dropped into her recent state of
self-contempt: into her lately-instilled doubt whether it really was in
Nature's 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: