Loving Rose, he nevertheless allowed his love no tender liberties.  The eyes of a lover are not his own; but his hands and lips are, till such time as they are claimed.  The sun must smile on us with peculiar warmth to woo us forth utterly-pluck our hearts out.  Rose smiled on many.  She smiled on Drummond Forth, Ferdinand Laxley, William Harvey, and her brother Harry; and she had the same eyes for all ages.  Once, previous to the arrival of the latter three, there was a change in her look, or Evan fancied it.  They were going to ride out together, and Evan, coming to his horse on the gravel walk, saw her talking with Drummond Forth.  He mounted, awaiting her, and either from a slight twinge of jealousy, or to mark her dainty tread with her riding-habit drawn above her heels, he could not help turning his head occasionally.  She listened to Drummond with attention, but presently broke from him, crying:  ’It’s an absurdity.  Speak to them yourself—­I shall not.’

On the ride that day, she began prattling of this and that with the careless glee that became her well, and then sank into a reverie.  Between-whiles her eyes had raised tumults in Evan’s breast by dropping on him in a sort of questioning way, as if she wished him to speak, or wished to fathom something she would rather have unspoken.  Ere they had finished their ride, she tossed off what burden may have been on her mind as lightly as a stray lock from her shoulders.  He thought that the singular look recurred.  It charmed him too much for him to speculate on it.

The Countess’s opportune ally, the gout, which had reduced the Hon. Melville Jocelyn’s right hand to a state of uselessness, served her with her brother equally:  for, having volunteered his services to the invalided diplomatist, it excused his stay at Beckley Court to himself, and was a mask to his intimacy with Rose, besides earning him the thanks of the family.  Harry Jocelyn, released from the wing of the Countess, came straight to him, and in a rough kind of way begged Evan to overlook his rudeness.

‘You took us all in at Fallow field, except Drummond,’ he said.  ’Drummond would have it you were joking.  I see it now.  And you’re a confoundedly clever fellow into the bargain, or you wouldn’t be quill-driving for Uncle Mel.  Don’t be uppish about it—­will you?’

‘You have nothing to fear on that point,’ said Evan.  With which promise the peace was signed between them.  Drummond and William Harvey were cordial, and just laughed over the incident.  Laxley, however, held aloof.  His retention of ideas once formed befitted his rank and station.  Some trifling qualms attended Evan’s labours with the diplomatist; but these were merely occasioned by the iteration of a particular phrase.  Mr. Goren, an enthusiastic tailor, had now and then thrown out to Evan stirring hints of an invention he claimed:  the discovery of a Balance in Breeches:  apparently the philosopher’s stone of the tailor craft, a secret that should ensure harmony of outline to the person and an indubitable accommodation to the most difficult legs.