She went on:  ‘Now, dear Van, you would hear of your sweet Rose?’

‘Not a word!’ Evan hastily answered.

‘Why, what does this indicate?  Whims!  Then you do love?’

‘I tell you, Louisa, I don’t want to hear a word of any of them,’ said Evan, with an angry gleam in his eyes.  ’They are nothing to me, nor I to them.  I—­my walk in life is not theirs.’

‘Faint heart! faint heart!’ the Countess lifted a proverbial forefinger.

’Thank heaven, I shall have the consolation of not going about, and bowing and smirking like an impostor!’ Evan exclaimed.

There was a wider intelligence in the Countess’s arrested gaze than she chose to fashion into speech.

‘I knew,’ she said, ’I knew how the air of this horrible Lymport would act on you.  But while I live, Evan, you shall not sink in the sludge.  You, with all the pains I have lavished on you! and with your presence!—­ for you have a presence, so rare among young men in this England!  You, who have been to a Court, and interchanged bows with duchesses, and I know not what besides—­nay, I do not accuse you; but if you had not been a mere boy, and an English boy-poor Eugenia herself confessed to me that you had a look—­a tender cleaving of the underlids—­that made her catch her hand to her heart sometimes:  it reminded her so acutely of false Belmarafa.  Could you have had a greater compliment than that?  You shall not stop here another day!’

‘True,’ said Evan, ‘for I’m going to London to-night.’

‘Not to London,’ the Countess returned, with a conquering glance, ’but to Beckley Court-and with me.’

‘To London, Louisa, with Mr. Goren.’

Again the Countess eyed him largely; but took, as it were, a side-path from her broad thought, saying:  ’Yes, fortunes are made in London, if you would they should be rapid.’

She meditated.  At that moment Dandy knocked at the door, and called outside:  ’Please, master, Mr. Goren says there’s a gentleman in the shop-wants to see you.’

‘Very well,’ replied Evan, moving.  He was swung violently round.

The Countess had clutched him by the arm.  A fearful expression was on her face.

‘Whither do you go?’ she said.

‘To the shop, Louisa.’

Too late to arrest the villanous word, she pulled at him.  ’Are you quite insane?  Consent to be seen by a gentleman there?  What has come to you?  You must be lunatic!  Are we all to be utterly ruined—­disgraced?’

‘Is my mother to starve?’ said Evan.

’Absurd rejoinder!  No!  You should have sold everything here before this.  She can live with Harriet—­she—­once out of this horrible element —­she would not show it.  But, Evan, you are getting away from me:  you are not going?—­speak!’

‘I am going,’ said Evan.

The Countess clung to him, exclaiming:  ’Never, while I have the power to detain you!’ but as he was firm and strong, she had recourse to her woman’s aids, and burst into a storm of sobs on his shoulder—­a scene of which Mrs. Mel was, for some seconds, a composed spectator.