him, for what he was, and he rose to his worth in the society she presided over.  A youth like Evan could not perceive, that in loving this lady’s daughter, and accepting the place she offered him, he was guilty of a breach of confidence; or reflect, that her entire absence of suspicion imposed upon him a corresponding honesty toward her.  He fell into a blindness.  Without dreaming for a moment that she designed to encourage his passion for Rose, he yet beheld himself in the light she had cast on him; and, received as her daughter’s friend, it seemed to him not so utterly monstrous that he might be her daughter’s lover.  A haughty, a grand, or a too familiar manner, would have kept his eyes clearer on his true condition.  Lady Jocelyn spoke to his secret nature, and eclipsed in his mind the outward aspects with which it was warring.  To her he was a gallant young man, a fit companion for Rose, and when she and Sir Franks said, and showed him, that they were glad to know him, his heart swam in a flood of happiness they little suspected.

This was another of the many forms of intoxication to which circumstances subjected the poor lover.  In Fallow field, among impertinent young men, Evan’s pride proclaimed him a tailor.  At Beckley Court, acted on by one genuine soul, he forgot it, and felt elate in his manhood.  The shades of Tailordom dispersed like fog before the full South-west breeze.  When I say he forgot it, the fact was present enough to him, but it became an outward fact:  he had ceased to feel it within him.  It was not a portion of his being, hard as Mrs. Mel had struck to fix it.  Consequently, though he was in a far worse plight than when he parted with Rose on board the Jocasta, he felt much less of an impostor now.  This may have been partly because he had endured his struggle with the Demogorgon the Countess painted to him in such frightful colours, and found him human after all; but it was mainly owing to the hearty welcome Lady Jocelyn had extended to him as the friend of Rose.

Loving Rose, he nevertheless allowed his love no tender liberties.  The eyes of a lover are not his own; but his hands and lips are, till such time as they are claimed.  The sun must smile on us with peculiar warmth to woo us forth utterly-pluck our hearts out.  Rose smiled on many.  She smiled on Drummond Forth, Ferdinand Laxley, William Harvey, and her brother Harry; and she had the same eyes for all ages.  Once, previous to the arrival of the latter three, there was a change in her look, or Evan fancied it.  They were going to ride out together, and Evan, coming to his horse on the gravel walk, saw her talking with Drummond Forth.  He mounted, awaiting her, and either from a slight twinge of jealousy, or to mark her dainty tread with her riding-habit drawn above her heels, he could not help turning his head occasionally.  She listened to Drummond with attention, but presently broke from him, crying:  ’It’s an absurdity.  Speak to them yourself—­I shall not.’