‘Yes.  I did.’

And now he was weak, and she was strong, and used her strength.

’I wrote it to save you.  Yes.  Call on your Creator, and be my judge, if you dare.  Never, never will you meet a soul more utterly devoted to you, Evan.  This Mr. Forth, this Laxley, I said, should go, because they were resolved to ruin you, and make you base.  They are gone.  The responsibility I take on myself.  Nightly—­during the remainder of my days—­I will pray for pardon.’

He raised his head to ask sombrely:  ‘Is your handwriting like Laxley’s?’

‘It seems so,’ she answered, with a pitiful sneer for one who could arrest her exaltation to inquire about minutiae.  ’Right or wrong, it is done, and if you choose to be my judge, think whether your own conscience is clear.  Why did you come here?  Why did you stay?  You have your free will,—­do you deny that?  Oh, I will take the entire blame, but you must not be a hypocrite, Van.  You know you were aware.  We had no confidences.  I was obliged to treat you like a child; but for you to pretend to suppose that roses grow in your path—­oh, that is paltry!  You are a hypocrite or an imbecile, if that is your course.’

Was he not something of the former?  The luxurious mist in which he had been living, dispersed before his sister’s bitter words, and, as she designed he should, he felt himself her accomplice.  But, again, reason struggled to enlighten him; for surely he would never have done a thing so disproportionate to the end to be gamed!  It was the unconnected action of his brain that thus advised him.  No thoroughly-fashioned, clear-spirited man conceives wickedness impossible to him:  but wickedness so largely mixed with folly, the best of us may reject as not among our temptations.  Evan, since his love had dawned, had begun to talk with his own nature, and though he knew not yet how much it would stretch or contract, he knew that he was weak and could not perform moral wonders without severe struggles.  The cynic may add, if he likes—­or without potent liquors.

Could he be his sister’s judge?  It is dangerous for young men to be too good.  They are so sweeping in their condemnations, so sublime in their conceptions of excellence, and the most finished Puritan cannot out-do their demands upon frail humanity.  Evan’s momentary self-examination saved him from this, and he told the Countess, with a sort of cold compassion, that he himself dared not blame her.

His tone was distinctly wanting in admiration of her, but she was somewhat over-wrought, and leaned her shoulder against him, and became immediately his affectionate, only too-zealous, sister; dearly to be loved, to be forgiven, to be prized:  and on condition of inserting a special petition for pardon in her orisons, to live with a calm conscience, and to be allowed to have her own way with him during the rest of her days.

It was a happy union—­a picture that the Countess was lured to admire in the glass.