‘Where the deuce did this young Harrington get his breeding from?’

‘He comes of a notable sire.’

‘Yes, but there’s no sign of the snob in him.’

’And I exonerate him from the charge of “adventuring” after Rose.  George Uplift tells me—­I had him in just now—­that the mother is a woman of mark and strong principle.  She has probably corrected the too luxuriant nature of Mel in her offspring.  That is to say in this one.  ’Pour les autres, je ne dis pas’.  Well, the young man will go; and if Rose chooses to become a monument of constancy, we can do nothing.  I shall give my advice; but as she has not deceived me, and she is a reasonable being, I shan’t interfere.  Putting the case at the worst, they will not want money.  I have no doubt Tom Cogglesby means what he says, and will do it.  So there we will leave the matter till we hear from Elburne House.’

Sir Franks groaned at the thought.

‘How much does he offer to settle on them?’ he asked.

’A thousand a year on the marriage, and the same amount to the first child.  I daresay the end would be that they would get all.’

Sir Franks nodded, and remained with one eye-brow pitiably elevated above the level of the other.

‘Anything but a tailor!’ he exclaimed presently, half to himself.

‘There is a prejudice against that craft,’ her ladyship acquiesced.  ’Beranger—­let me see—­your favourite Frenchman, Franks, wasn’t it his father?—­no, his grandfather.  “Mon pauvre et humble grand-pyre,” I think, was a tailor.  Hum! the degrees of the thing, I confess, don’t affect me.  One trade I imagine to be no worse than another.’

‘Ferdinand’s allowance is about a thousand,’ said Sir Franks, meditatively.

‘And won’t be a farthing more till he comes to the title,’ added her ladyship.

‘Well,’ resumed Sir Franks, ‘it’s a horrible bother!’

His wife philosophically agreed with him, and the subject was dropped.

Lady Jocelyn felt with her husband, more than she chose to let him know, and Sir Franks could have burst into anathemas against fate and circumstances, more than his love of a smooth world permitted.  He, however, was subdued by her calmness; and she, with ten times the weight of brain, was manoeuvred by the wonderful dash of General Rose Jocelyn.  For her ladyship, thinking, ‘I shall get the blame of all this,’ rather sided insensibly with the offenders against those who condemned them jointly; and seeing that Rose had been scrupulously honest and straightforward in a very delicate matter, this lady was so constituted that she could not but applaud her daughter in her heart.  A worldly woman would have acted, if she had not thought, differently; but her ladyship was not a worldly woman.

Evan’s bearing and character had, during his residence at Beckley Court, become so thoroughly accepted as those of a gentleman, and one of their own rank, that, after an allusion to the origin of his breeding, not a word more was said by either of them on that topic.  Besides, Rose had dignified him by her decided conduct.