Ordinarily, Rose would have clapped heel to horse the moment the thought came.  She waited for the permission, and flew off at a gallop, waving back Laxley, who was for joining her.

‘Franks will be a little rusty about the mare,’ the Countess heard Lady Jocelyn say; and Harry just then stooped his head to the carriage, and said, in his blunt fashion, ‘After all, it won’t show much.’

‘We are not cattle!’ exclaimed the frenzied Countess, within her bosom.  Alas! it was almost a democratic outcry they made her guilty of; but she was driven past patience.  And as a further provocation, Evan would open his eyes.  She laid her handkerchief over them with loving delicacy, remembering in a flash that her own face had been all the while exposed to Mr. George Uplift; and then the terrors of his presence at Beckley Court came upon her, and the fact that she had not for the last ten minutes been the serene Countess de Saldar; and she quite hated Andrew, for vulgarity in others evoked vulgarity in her, which was the reason why she ranked vulgarity as the chief of the deadly sins.  Her countenance for Harry and all the others save poor Andrew was soon the placid heaven-confiding sister’s again; not before Lady Jocelyn had found cause to observe to Drummond: 

‘Your Countess doesn’t ruffle well.’

But a lady who is at war with two or three of the facts of Providence, and yet will have Providence for her ally, can hardly ruffle well.  Do not imagine that the Countess’s love for her brother was hollow.  She was assured when she came up to the spot where he fell, that there was no danger; he had but dislocated his shoulder, and bruised his head a little.  Hearing this, she rose out of her clamorous heart, and seized the opportunity for a small burst of melodrama.  Unhappily, Lady Jocelyn, who gave the tone to the rest, was a Spartan in matters of this sort; and as she would have seen those dearest to her bear the luck of the field, she could see others.  When the call for active help reached her, you beheld a different woman.

The demonstrativeness the Countess thirsted for was afforded her by Juley Bonner, and in a measure by her sister Caroline, who loved Evan passionately.  The latter was in riding attire, about to mount to ride and meet them, accompanied by the Duke.  Caroline had hastily tied up her hair; a rich golden brown lump of it hung round her cheek; her limpid eyes and anxiously-nerved brows impressed the Countess wonderfully as she ran down the steps and bent her fine well-filled bust forward to ask the first hurried question.

The Countess patted her shoulder.  ‘Safe, dear,’ she said aloud, as one who would not make much of it.  And in a whisper, ‘You look superb.’

I must charge it to Caroline’s beauty under the ducal radiance, that a stream of sweet feelings entering into the Countess made her forget to tell her sister that George Uplift was by.  Caroline had not been abroad, and her skin was not olive-hued; she was a beauty, and a majestic figure, little altered since the day when the wooden marine marched her out of Lymport.