CHAPTER XXXVII

THE RETREAT FROM BECKLEY

Never would the Countess believe that brother of hers, idiot as by nature he might be, and heir to unnumbered epithets, would so far forget what she had done for him, as to drag her through the mud for nothing:  and so she told Caroline again and again, vehemently.

It was about ten minutes before the time for descending to the breakfast-table.  She was dressed, and sat before the glass, smoothing her hair, and applying the contents of a pot of cold cream to her forehead between-whiles.  With perfect sincerity she repeated that she could not believe it.  She had only trusted Evan once since their visit to Beckley; and that this once he should, when treated as a man, turn traitor to their common interests, and prove himself an utter baby, was a piece of nonsense her great intelligence indignantly rejected.

‘Then, if true,’ she answered Caroline’s assurances finally, ’if true, he is not his father’s son!’

By which it may be seen that she had indeed taken refuge in the Castle of Negation against the whole army of facts.

’He is acting, Carry.  He is acting the ideas of his ridiculous empty noddle!’

‘No,’ said Caroline, mournfully, ’he is not.  I have never known Evan to lie.’

’Then you must forget the whipping he once had from his mother—­little dolt! little selfish pig!  He obtains his reputation entirely from his abominable selfishness, and then stands tall, and asks us to admire him.  He bursts with vanity.  But if you lend your credence to it, Carry, how, in the name of goodness, are you to appear at the breakfast?

‘I was going to ask you whether you would come,’ said Caroline, coldly.

‘If I can get my hair to lie flat by any means at all, of course!’ returned the Countess.  ’This dreadful horrid country pomade!  Why did we not bring a larger stock of the Andalugian Regenerator?  Upon my honour, my dear, you use a most enormous quantity; I must really tell you that.’

Conning here entered to say that Mr. Evan had given orders for the boxes to be packed and everything got ready to depart by half-past eleven o’clock, when the fly would call for them and convey them to Fallow field in time to meet the coach for London.

The Countess turned her head round to Caroline like an astonished automaton.

‘Given orders!’ she interjected.

‘I have very little to get ready,’ remarked Caroline.

‘Be so good as to wait outside the door one instant,’ said the Countess to Conning, with particular urbanity.

Conning heard a great deal of vigorous whispering within, and when summoned to re-appear, a note was handed to her to convey to Mr. Harrington immediately.  He was on the lawn; read it, and wrote back three hasty lines in pencil.

’Louisa.  You have my commands to quit this house, at the hour named, this day.  You will go with me.  E. H.’