Mr. Lee kissed her hand, and took snuff with Mr. Haward; then, after an ardent speech crammed with references to Vulcan and Venus, chains that were not slight, hearts that were of softer substance, sat down beside this kind and dazzling vision, and applied his clever fingers to the problem in hand.  He was a personable young gentleman, who had studied at Oxford, and who, proudly conscious that his tragedy of Artaxerxes, then reposing in the escritoire at home, much outmerited Haward’s talked-of comedy, felt no diffidence in the company of the elder fine gentleman.  He rattled on of this and that, and Evelyn listened kindly, with only the curve of her cheek visible to the family friend.  The silver heart was restored to its chain; the lady smiled her thanks; the enamored youth hitched his chair some inches nearer the fair whom he had obliged, and, with his hand upon his heart, entered the realm of high-flown speech.  The gay curtains waved; the roses were sweet; black Chloe sewed and sewed; the hairdresser’s hands wove in and out, as though he were a wizard making passes.

Haward rose to take his leave.  Evelyn yielded him her hand; it was cold against his lips.  She was nonchalant and smiling; he was easy, unoffended, admirably the fine gentleman.  For one moment their eyes met.  “I had been wiser,” thought the man, “I had been wiser to have myself told her of that brown witch, that innocent sorceress!  Why something held my tongue I know not.  Now she hath read my idyl, but all darkened, all awry.”  The woman thought:  “Cruel and base!  You knew that my heart was yours to break, cast aside, and forget!”

Out of the house the sunlight beat and blinded.  Houses of red brick, houses of white wood; the long, wide, dusty Duke of Gloucester Street; gnarled mulberry-trees broad-leafed against a September sky, deeply, passionately blue; glimpses of wood and field,—­all seemed remote without distance, still without stillness, the semblance of a dream, and yet keen and near to oppression.  It was a town of stores, of ordinaries and public places; from open door and window all along Duke of Gloucester Street came laughter, round oaths, now and then a scrap of drinking song.  To Haward, giddy, ill at ease, sickening of a fever, the sounds were now as a cry in his ear, now as the noise of a distant sea.  The minister of James City parish and the minister of Ware Creek were walking before him, arm in arm, set full sail for dinner after a stormy morning.  “For lo! the wicked prospereth!” said one, and “Fair View parish bound over to the devil again!” plained the other.  “He’s firm in the saddle; he’ll ride easy to the day he drinks himself to death, thanks to this sudden complaisance of Governor and Commissary!”

“Thanks to”—­cried the other sourly, and gave the thanks where they were due.

Haward heard the words, but even in the act of quickening his pace to lay a heavy hand upon the speaker’s shoulder a listlessness came upon him, and he forbore.  The memory of the slurring speech went from him; his thoughts were thistledown blown hither and yon by every vagrant air.  Coming to Marot’s ordinary he called for wine; then went up the stair to his room, and sitting down at the table presently fell asleep, with his head upon his arms.