’Trust Old Tom for plots, Van!  He’ll blow you up in a twinkling, the cunning old dog!  He pretends to be hard—­he ’s as soft as I am, if it wasn’t for his crotchets.  We’ll hand him back the cash, and that’s ended.  And—­eh? what a dear girl she is!  Not that I’m astonished.  My Harry might have married a lord—­sit at top of any table in the land!  And you’re as good as any man.

That’s my opinion.  But I say she’s a wonderful girl to see it.’

Chattering thus, Andrew drove with the dear boy into Fallow field.  Evan was still in his dream.  To him the generous love and valiant openness of Rose, though they were matched in his own bosom, seemed scarcely human.  Almost as noble to him were the gentlemanly plainspeaking of Sir Franks and Lady Jocelyn’s kind commonsense.  But the more he esteemed them, the more unbounded and miraculous appeared the prospect of his calling their daughter by the sacred name, and kneeling with her at their feet.  Did the dear heavens have that in store for him?  The horizon edges were dimly lighted.

Harry looked about under his eye-lids for Evan, trying at the same time to compose himself for the martyrdom he had to endure in sitting at table with the presumptuous fellow.  The Countess signalled him to come within the presence.  As he was crossing the room, Rose entered, and moved to meet him, with:  ‘Ah, Harry! back again!  Glad to see you.’

Harry gave her a blunt nod, to which she was inattentive.

‘What!’ whispered the Countess, after he pressed the tips of her fingers.  ‘Have you brought back the grocer?’

Now this was hard to stand.  Harry could forgive her her birth, and pass it utterly by if she chose to fall in love with him; but to hear the grocer mentioned, when he knew of the tailor, was a little too much, and what Harry felt his ingenuous countenance was accustomed to exhibit.  The Countess saw it.  She turned her head from him to the diplomatist, and he had to remain like a sentinel at her feet.  He did not want to be thanked for the green box:  still he thought she might have favoured him with one of her much-embracing smiles: 

In the evening, after wine, when he was warm, and had almost forgotten the insult to his family and himself, the Countess snubbed him.  It was unwise on her part, but she had the ghastly thought that facts were oozing out, and were already half known.  She was therefore sensitive tenfold to appearances; savage if one failed to keep up her lie to her, and was guilty of a shadow of difference of behaviour.  The pic-nic over, our General would evacuate Beckley Court, and shake the dust off her shoes, and leave the harvest of what she had sown to Providence.  Till then, respect, and the honours of war!  So the Countess snubbed him, and he being full of wine, fell into the hands of Juliana, who had witnessed the little scene.

‘She has made a fool of others as well as of you,’ said Juliana.