speak publicly, and disgrace and humiliate, that she might save him from the devils that had ruined his father.
“My lady,” said the terrible woman, thanking her in reply to an invitation that she should be seated, “I have come for my son. I hear he has been playing the lord in your house, my lady. I humbly thank your ladyship for your kindness to him, but he is nothing more than a tailor’s son, and is bound a tailor himself that his father may be called an honest man. I am come to take him away.”
Mrs. Mel seemed to speak without much effort, though the pale flush of her cheeks showed that she felt what she was doing. Juliana was pale as death, watching Rose. Intensely bright with the gem-like light of her gallant spirit, Rose’s eyes fixed on Evan. He met them and smiled. The words of Ruth passed through his heart, nourishing him. With this angel lifting him up, what need he fear? If he reddened, the blush was taken up by love. But the Countess, who had given Rose to Evan, and the duke to Caroline, where was her supporter? The duke was entertaining Caroline with no less dexterity, and Rose’s eyes said to Evan: “Feel no shame that I do not feel!” but the Countess stood alone. It is ever thus with genius! to quote the numerous illustrious authors who have written of it.
What mattered it now that in the dead hush Lady Jocelyn should assure her mother that she had been misinformed, and that Mrs. Mel was presently quieted, and made to sit with others before the fruits and the wines? All eyes were hateful—the very thought of Providence confused her brain. Almost reduced to imbecility, the Countess imagined, as a reality, that Sir Abraham had borne with her till her public announcement of relationship, and that then the outraged ghost would no longer be restrained, and had struck this blow. She talked, she laughed,—she was unaware of what passed in the world.
The crushed pic-nic tried to get a little air, and made pathetic attempts at conversation. Mrs. Mel sat upon the company with the weight of all tailordom.
And now a messenger came for Harry. Everybody was so zealously employed in the struggle to appear comfortable under Mrs. Mel, that his departure was hardly observed. The general feeling for Evan and his sisters, by their superiors in rank, was one of kindly pity. Laxley, however, did not behave well. He put up his glass and scrutinised Mrs. Mel, and then examined Evan, and Rose thought that in his interchange of glances with anyone there was a lurking revival of the scene gone by. She signalled with her eyebrows for Drummond to correct him, but Drummond had another occupation. Andrew made the diversion. He whispered to his neighbour, and the whisper went round, and the laugh; and Mr. John Raikes grew extremely uneasy in his seat, and betrayed an extraordinary alarm. But he also was soon relieved. A messenger had come from Harry to Mrs. Evremonde, bearing a slip of paper. This the lady glanced at, and handed it to Drummond. A straggling pencil had traced these words:
“Just running by S.W. gates—saw the Captain coming in—couldn’t stop to stop him—tremendous hurry—important. Harry J.”
Drummond sent the paper to Lady Jocelyn. After her perusal of it a scout was despatched to the summit of Olympus, and his report proclaimed the advance in the direction of the bull-dogs of a smart little figure of a man in white hat and white trousers, who kept flicking his legs with a cane.
Mrs. Evremonde rose and conferred with her ladyship an instant, and then Drummond took her arm quietly, and passed round Olympus to the east, and Lady Jocelyn broke up the sitting.
Juliana saw Rose go up to Evan and take his hand, and make him introduce her to his mother. She turned lividly white, and went to a corner of the park by herself, and cried bitterly.
Lady Jocelyn, Sir Franks, and Sir John, remained by the tables, but before the guests were out of ear-shot, the individual signalled from Olympus presented himself.
“There are times when one can’t see what else to do but to lie,” said her ladyship to Sir Franks, “and when we do lie the only way is to lie intrepidly.”
Turning from her perplexed husband, she exclaimed:
“Ah! Lawson?”
Captain Evremonde lifted his hat, declining an intimacy.
“Where is my wife, madam?”
“Have you just come from the Arctic Regions?”
“I have come for my wife, madam!”
His unsettled grey eyes wandered restlessly on Lady Jocelyn’s face. The Countess, standing apart, near the duke, felt some pity for the wife of that cropped-headed, tight-skinned lunatic at large, but deeper was the Countess’s pity for Lady Jocelyn, in thinking of the account she would have to render on the Day of Judgment, when she heard her ladyship reply:
“Evelyn is not here.”
Captain Evremonde bowed profoundly, trailing his broad white hat along the sward.
“Do me the favour to read this, madam,” he said, and handed a letter to her.
Lady Jocelyn raised her brows as she gathered the contents of the letter.
“Ferdinand’s handwriting!” she exclaimed.
“I accuse no one, madam,—I make no accusation. I have every respect for you, madam,—you have my esteem. I am sorry to intrude, madam, an intrusion is regretted. My wife runs away from her bed, madam,—and I have the law, madam,—the law is with the husband. No force!” He lashed his cane sharply against his white legs. “The law, madam. No brute force!” His cane made a furious whirl, cracking again on his legs, as he reiterated, “The law!”
“Does the law advise you to strike at a tangent all over the country in search for her?” inquired Lady Jocelyn.
Captain Evremonde became ten times more voluble and excited.
