should go, because they were resolved to ruin you, and make you base. They are gone. The responsibility I take on myself. Nightly—during the remainder of my days—I will pray for pardon.”
He raised his head to ask sombrely: “Is your handwriting like Laxley’s?”
“It seems so,” she answered, with a pitiful sneer for one who could arrest her exaltation to inquire about minutiæ. “Right or wrong, it is done, and if you choose to be my judge, think whether your own conscience is clear. Why did you come here? Why did you stay? You have your free will,—do you deny that? Oh, I will take the entire blame, but you must not be a hypocrite, Van. You know you were aware. We had no confidence. I was obliged to treat you like a child; but for you to pretend to suppose that roses grow in your path—oh, that is paltry! You are a hypocrite or an imbecile, if that is your course.”
Was he not something of the former? The luxurious mist in which he had been living, dispersed before his sister’s bitter words, and, as she designed he should, he felt himself her accomplice. But, again, reason struggled to enlighten him; for surely he would never have done a thing so disproportionate to the end to be gained! It was the unconnected action of his brain that thus advised him. No thoroughly-fashioned, clear-spirited man conceives wickedness impossible to him: but wickedness so largely mixed with folly, the best of us may reject as not among our temptations. Evan, since his love had dawned, had begun to talk with his own nature, and though he knew not yet how much it would stretch or contract, he knew that he was weak and could not perform moral wonders without severe struggles. The cynic may add, if he likes—or without potent liquors.
Could he be his sister’s judge? It is dangerous for young men to be too good. They are so sweeping in their condemnations; so sublime in their conceptions of excellence, and the most finished Puritan cannot out-do their demands upon frail humanity. Evan’s momentary self-examination saved him from this, and he told the Countess, with a sort of cold compassion, that he himself dared not blame her.
His tone was distinctly wanting in admiration of her, but she was somewhat over-wrought, and leaned her shoulder against him, and became immediately his affectionate, only too-zealous, sister; dearly to be loved, to be forgiven, to be prized: and on condition of inserting a special petition for pardon in her orisons, to live with a calm conscience, and to be allowed to have her own way with him during the rest of her days.
It was a happy union—a picture that the Countess was lured to admire in the glass.
Sad that so small a murmur should destroy it for ever!
“What?” cried the Countess bursting from his arm.
“Go?” she emphasised with the hardness of determined unbelief, as if plucking the words, one by one, out of her reluctant ears. “Go to Lady Jocelyn, and tell her I wrote the letter?”
“You can do no less, I fear,” said Evan, eyeing the floor and breathing a deep breath.
“Then I did hear you correctly? Oh, you must be mad—idiotic! There, pray go away, Evan. Come in the morning. You are too much for my nerves.”
Evan rose, putting out his hand as if to take hers and plead with her. She rejected the first motion, and repeated her desire for him to leave her; saying, cheerfully:
“Good night, dear, I dare say we shan’t meet till the morning.”
“You can’t let this injustice continue a single night, Louisa?” said he.
She was deep in the business of arranging a portion of her attire.
“Go—go; please,” she responded.
Lingering, he said: “If I go, it will be straight to Lady Jocelyn.”
She stamped angrily.
“Only go!” and then she found him gone, and she stooped lower to the glass to mark if the recent agitation were observable under her eyes. There, looking at herself, her heart dropped heavily in her bosom. She ran to the door and hurried swiftly after Evan, pulling him back speechlessly.
“Where are you going, Evan?”
“To Lady Jocelyn.”
The unhappy victim of her devotion stood panting.
“If you go, I—I take poison!”
It was for him now to be struck; but he was suffering too strong an anguish to be susceptible to mock tragedy. The Countess paused to study him. She began to fear her brother. “I will!” she reiterated wildly, without moving him at all. And the quiet inflexibility of his face forbade the ultimate hope which lies in giving men a dose of hysterics when they are obstinate. She tried by taunts and angry vituperations to make him look fierce, if but an instant, to precipitate her into an exhibition she was so well prepared for.
“Evan! what! after all my love, my confidence in you—I need not have told you—to expose us! Brother? would you? Oh!”
“I will not let this last another hour,” said Evan, firmly, at the same time seeking to caress her. She spurned his fruitless affection, feeling, nevertheless, how cruel was her fate; for with any other save a brother she had arts at her disposal to 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 realising 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