who will spin you like a top if you get her.  That Mr. Forth knew it as well, and that vile young Laxley.  They are gone!  Why are they gone?  Because they thwarted me—­they crossed your interests—­I said they should go.  George Uplift is going to-day.  The house is left to us; and I believe firmly that Mrs. Bonner’s will contains a memento of the effect of our frequent religious conversations.  So you would leave now?  I suspect nobody, but we are all human, and Wills would not have been tampered with for the first time.  Besides, and the Countess’s imagination warmed till she addressed her brother as a confederate, ’we shall then see to whom Beckley Court is bequeathed.  Either way it may be yours.  Yours! and you suffer their plots to drive you forth.  Do you not perceive that Mama was brought here to-day on purpose to shame us and cast us out?  We are surrounded by conspiracies, but if our faith is pure who can hurt us?  If I had not that consolation—­would that you had it, too!—­would it be endurable to me to see those menials whispering and showing their forced respect?  As it is, I am fortified to forgive them.  I breathe another atmosphere.  Oh, Evan! you did not attend to Mr. Parsley’s beautiful last sermon.  The Church should have been your vocation.’

From vehemence the Countess had subsided to a mournful gentleness.  She had been too excited to notice any changes in her brother’s face during her speech, and when he turned from the door, and still eyeing her fixedly, led her to a chair, she fancied from his silence that she had subdued and convinced him.  A delicious sense of her power, succeeded by a weary reflection that she had constantly to employ it, occupied her mind, and when presently she looked up from the shade of her hand, it was to agitate her head pitifully at her brother.

‘All this you have done for me, Louisa,’ he said.

‘Yes, Evan,—­all!’ she fell into his tone.

’And you are the cause of Laxley’s going?  Did you know anything of that anonymous letter?’

He was squeezing her hand-with grateful affection, as she was deluded to imagine.

‘Perhaps, dear,—­a little,’ her conceit prompted her to admit.

‘Did you write it?’

He gazed intently into her eyes, and as the question shot like a javelin, she tried ineffectually to disengage her fingers; her delusion waned; she took fright, but it was too late; he had struck the truth out of her before she could speak.  Her spirit writhed like a snake in his hold.  Innumerable things she was ready to say, and strove to; the words would not form on her lips.

‘I will be answered, Louisa.’

The stern manner he had assumed gave her no hope of eluding him.  With an inward gasp, and a sensation of nakedness altogether new to her, dismal, and alarming, she felt that she could not lie.  Like a creature forsaken of her staunchest friend, she could have flung herself to the floor.  The next instant her natural courage restored her.  She jumped up and stood at bay.