dear farewell on which it feeds, away from the light, dying by bits? In Evan’s heart Love seemed to die, and all the pangs of a death were there as he trod along the gravel and stepped beneath the gates of Beckley Court.
Meantime the gallant Countess was not in any way disposed to retreat on account of Evan’s defection. The behaviour towards him at the breakfast-table proved to her that he had absolutely committed his egregious folly, and as no general can have concert with a fool, she cut him off from her affections resolutely. Her manifest disdain at his last speech, said as much to everybody present. Besides, the lady was in her element here, and compulsion is required to make us relinquish our element. Lady Jocelyn certainly had not expressly begged of her to remain: the Countess told Melville so, who said that if she required such an invitation she should have it, but that a guest to whom they were so much indebted, was bound to spare them these formalities.
“What am I to do?”
The Countess turned piteously to the diplomatist’s wife.
She answered, retiringly: “Indeed I cannot say.”
Upon this, the Countess accepted Melville’s arm, and had some thoughts of punishing the woman.
They were seen parading the lawn. Mr. George Uploft chuckled singularly.
“Just the old style,” he remarked, but corrected the inadvertence with a ‘hem!’ committing himself more shamefully the instant after. “I’ll wager she has the old Dip down on his knee before she cuts.”
“Bet can’t be taken,” observed Sir John Loring. “It requires a spy.”
Harry, however, had heard the remark, and because he wished to speak to her, let us hope, and reproach her for certain things when she chose to be disengaged, he likewise sallied out, being forlorn as a youth whose sweet vanity is much hurt.
The Duke had paired off with Mrs. Strike. The lawn was fair in sunlight where they walked. The air was rich with harvest smells, and the scent of autumnal roses. Caroline was by nature luxurious and soft. The thought of that drilled figure to which she was returning in bondage, may have thrown into bright relief the polished and gracious nobleman who walked by her side, shadowing forth the chances of a splendid freedom. Two lovely tears fell from her eyes. The Duke watched them quietly.
“Do you know they make me jealous?” he said.
Caroline answered him with a faint smile.
“Reassure me, my dear lady, you are not going with your brother this morning?”
“My lord, I have no choice!”
“May I speak to you as your warmest friend? From what I hear, it appears to be right that your brother should not stay. To the best of my ability I will provide for him; but I sincerely desire to disconnect you from those who are unworthy of you. Have you not promised to trust in me? Pray, let me be your guide.”
Caroline replied to the heart of his words: “My lord, I dare not.”
“What has changed you?”
“I am not changed, but awakened,” said Caroline.”
The Duke paced on in silence.
“Pardon me if I comprehend nothing of such a change,” he resumed. “I asked you to sacrifice much; all that I could give in return I offered. Is it the world you fear?”
“What is the world to such as I am, my lord?”
“Can you consider it a duty to deliver yourself bound to that man again?”
“Heaven pardon me, my lord, I think of tha too little!”
The Duke’s next question: “Then what can it be?” stood in his eyes.
“Oh, my lord!” Caroline’s touch quivered on his arm. “Do not suppose me frivolous, ungrateful, or—or cowardly. For myself you have offered more happiness than I could have hoped for. To be allied to one so generous, I could bear anything. Yesterday you had my word: give it to me back to-day!”
Very curiously the Duke gazed on her, for there was evidence of internal torture across her forehead.
“I may at least beg to know the cause for this request?”
She quelled some throbbing in her bosom. “Yes, my lord.”
He waited, and she said: “There is one whom, if I offended, I could not live. If, now, I followed my wishes, he would lose his faith in the last creature that loves him. He is unhappy. I could bear what is called disgrace, my lord,—I shudder to say it—I could sin against Heaven; but I dare not do what would make him despise me?”
She was trembling violently; yet the nobleman, in his surprise, could not forbear from asking who this person might be, whose influence on her righteous actions was so strong.
“It is my brother, my lord,” she said.
Still more astonished, “Your brother!” the Duke exclaimed. “My dearest lady, I would not wound you; but is not this a delusion? we are so placed that we must speak plainly. Your brother I have reason to feel sure is quite unworthy of you.”
“Unworthy? My brother Evan? Oh, my lord! he is noble,—he is the best of men!”
“And how, between yesterday and to-day, has he changed you?”
“It is that yesterday I did not know him, and to-day I do.”
Her brother, a common tradesman, a man guilty of forgery and the utmost baseness—all but kicked out of the house! The Duke was too delicate to press her further. Moreover, Caroline had emphasised the “yesterday” and “to-day,” showing that the interval which had darkened Evan to everybody else, had illumined him to her. He employed some courtly eloquence, better unrecorded; but if her firm resolution perplexed him, it threw a strange halo round the youth from whom it sprang.
