‘Folly must come out,’ said her ladyship.  ’It’s a combustible material.  I won’t have her health injured.  She shall go into the world more.  She will be presented at Court, and if it’s necessary to give her a dose or two to counteract her vanity, I don’t object.  This will wear off, or, ‘si c’est veritablement une grande passion, eh bien’ we must take what Providence sends us.’

’And which we might have prevented if we had condescended to listen to the plainest worldly wisdom,’ added Mrs. Shorne.

‘Yes,’ said Lady Jocelyn, equably, ’you know, you and I, Julia, argue from two distinct points.  Girls may be shut up, as you propose.  I don’t think nature intended to have them the obverse of men.  I ’m sure their mothers never designed that they should run away with footmen, riding-masters, chance curates, as they occasionally do, and wouldn’t if they had points of comparison.  My opinion is that Prospero was just saved by the Prince of Naples being wrecked on his island, from a shocking mis-alliance between his daughter and the son of Sycorax.  I see it clearly.  Poetry conceals the extreme probability, but from what I know of my sex, I should have no hesitation in turning prophet also, as to that.’

What could Mrs. Shorne do with a mother who talked in this manner?  Mrs. Melville, when she arrived to take part in the conference, which gradually swelled to a family one, was equally unable to make Lady Jocelyn perceive that her plan of bringing up Rose was, in the present result of it, other than unlucky.

Now the two Generals—­Rose Jocelyn and the Countess de Saldar—­ had brought matters to this pass; and from the two tactical extremes:  the former by openness and dash; the latter by subtlety, and her own interpretations of the means extended to her by Providence.  I will not be so bold as to state which of the two I think right.  Good and evil work together in this world.  If the Countess had not woven the tangle, and gained Evan time, Rose would never have seen his blood,—­never have had her spirit hurried out of all shows and forms and habits of thought, up to the gates of existence, as it were, where she took him simply as God created him and her, and clave to him.  Again, had Rose been secret, when this turn in her nature came, she would have forfeited the strange power she received from it, and which endowed her with decision to say what was in her heart, and stamp it lastingly there.  The two Generals were quite antagonistic, but no two, in perfect ignorance of one another’s proceedings, ever worked so harmoniously toward the main result.  The Countess was the skilful engineer:  Rose the General of cavalry.  And it did really seem that, with Tom Cogglesby and his thousands in reserve, the victory was about to be gained.  The male Jocelyns, an easy race, decided that, if the worst came to the worst, and Rose proved a wonder, there was money, which was something.