‘Hoy!  Harrington!’ shouted Harry, beckoning to him.  ’Come, make haste!  I’m in a deuce of a mess.’

The two Wheedles—­Susan and Polly—­were standing in front of him, and after his call to Evan, he turned to continue some exhortation or appeal to the common sense of women, largely indulged in by young men when the mischief is done.

’Harrington, do speak to her.  She looks upon you as a sort of parson.  I can’t make her believe I didn’t send for her.  Of course, she knows I ‘m fond of her.  My dear fellow,’ he whispered, ’I shall be ruined if my grandmother hears of it.  Get her away, please.  Promise anything.’

Evan took her hand and asked for the child.

‘Quite well, sir,’ faltered Susan.

‘You should not have come here.’

Susan stared, and commenced whimpering:  ‘Didn’t you wish it, sir?’

‘Oh, she’s always thinking of being made a lady of,’ cried Polly.  ’As if Mr. Harry was going to do that.  It wants a gentleman to do that.’

‘The carriage came for me, sir, in the afternoon,’ said Susan, plaintively, ‘with your compliments, and would I come.  I thought—­’

‘What carriage?’ asked Evan.

Raikes, who was ogling Polly, interposed grandly, ‘Mine!’

‘And you sent in my name for this girl to come here?’ Evan turned wrathfully on him.

’My dear Harrington, when you hit you knock down.  The wise require but one dose of experience.  The Countess wished it, and I did dispatch.’

‘The Countess!’ Harry exclaimed; ’Jove! do you mean to say that the Countess—­’

‘De Saldar,’ added Jack.  ‘In Britain none were worthy found.’

Harry gave a long whistle.

‘Leave at once,’ said Evan to Susan.  ’Whatever you may want send to me for.  And when you think you can meet your parents, I will take you to them.  Remember that is what you must do.’

’Make her give up that stupidness of hers, about being made a lady of, Mr. Harrington,’ said the inveterate Polly.

Susan here fell a-weeping.

‘I would go, sir,’ she said.  ’I ’m sure I would obey you:  but I can’t.  I can’t go back to the inn.  They ’re beginning to talk about me, because—­because I can’t—­can’t pay them, and I’m ashamed.’

Evan looked at Harry.

‘I forgot,’ the latter mumbled, but his face was crimson.  He put his hands in his pockets.  ‘Do you happen to have a note or so?’ he asked.

Evan took him aside and gave him what he had; and this amount, without inspection or reserve, Harry offered to Susan.  She dashed his hand impetuously from her sight.

‘There, give it to me,’ said Polly.  ’Oh, Mr. Harry! what a young man you are!’

Whether from the rebuff, or the reproach, or old feelings reviving, Harry was moved to go forward, and lay his hand on Susan’s shoulder and mutter something in her ear that softened her.