This somehow favoured him with Rose.  Sheep’s eyes are a dainty dish for little maids, and we know how largely they indulge in it; but when they are just a bit doubtful of the quality of the sheep, let the good animal shut his lids forthwith, for a time.  Had she not been a little unkind to him in the morning?  She had since tried to help him, and that had appeased her conscience, for in truth he was a good young man.  Those very words she mentally pronounced, while he was thinking, ’Would she feel it for a friend?’ We dare but guess at the puzzle young women present now and then, but I should say that Evan was nearer the mark, and that the ‘good young man’ was a sop she threw to that within her which wanted quieting, and was thereby passably quieted.  Perhaps the good young man is offended?  Let us assure him of our disinterested graciousness.

‘Is your friend coming?’ she asked, and to his reply said, ‘I’m glad’; and pitched upon a new song-one that, by hazard, did not demand his attentions, and he surveyed the company to find a vacant seat with a neighbour.  Juley Bonner was curled up on the sofa, looking like a damsel who has lost the third volume of an exciting novel, and is divining the climax.  He chose to avoid Miss Bonner.  Drummond was leaving the side of the Giorgione lady.  Evan passed leisurely, and Drummond said ’You know Mrs. Evremonde?  Let me introduce you.’

He was soon in conversation with the glorious-haired dame.

‘Excellently done, my brother!’ thinks the Countess de Saldar.

Rose sees the matter coolly.  What is it to her?  But she had finished with song.  Jenny takes her place at the piano; and, as Rose does not care for instrumental music, she naturally talks and laughs with Drummond, and Jenny does not altogether like it, even though she is not playing to the ear of William Harvey, for whom billiards have such attractions; but, at the close of the performance, Rose is quiet enough, and the Countess observes her sitting, alone, pulling the petals of a flower in her lap, on which her eyes are fixed.  Is the doe wounded?  The damsel of the disinterested graciousness is assuredly restless.  She starts up and goes out upon the balcony to breathe the night-air, mayhap regard the moon, and no one follows her.

Had Rose been guiltless of offence, Evan might have left Beckley Court the next day, to cherish his outraged self-love.  Love of woman is strongly distinguished from pure egoism when it has got a wound:  for it will not go into a corner complaining, it will fight its duel on the field or die.  Did the young lady know his origin, and scorn him?  He resolved to stay and teach her that the presumption she had imputed to him was her own mistake.  And from this Evan graduated naturally enough the finer stages of self-deception downward.

A lover must have his delusions, just as a man must have a skin.  But here was another singular change in Evan.  After his ale-prompted speech in Fallow field, he was nerved to face the truth in the eyes of all save Rose.  Now that the truth had enmeshed his beloved, he turned to battle with it; he was prepared to deny it at any moment; his burnt flesh was as sensitive as the Countess’s.