‘Bravo, the black mare!’

‘Has he done it?’ said Andrew, wiping his poll.

‘He?  No, the mare!’ shouted Mr. George, and bolted off, no longer to be restrained.

The Countess, doubly relieved, threw herself back in the carriage, and Andrew drew a breath, saying:  ’Evan has beat him—­I saw that!  The other’s horse swerved right round.’

‘I fear,’ said Mrs. Evremonde, ’Mr. Harrington has had a fall.  Don’t be alarmed—­it may not be much.’

‘A fall!’ exclaimed the Countess, equally divided between alarms of sisterly affection and a keen sense of the romance of the thing.

Miss Carrington ordered the carriage to be driven round.  They had not gone far when they were met by Harry Jocelyn riding in hot haste, and he bellowed to the coachman to drive as hard as he could, and stop opposite Brook’s farm.

The scene on the other side of the fence would have been a sweet one to the central figure in it had his eyes then been open.  Surrounded by Lady Jocelyn, Drummond, Seymour, and the rest, Evan’s dust-stained body was stretched along the road, and his head was lying in the lap of Rose, who, pale, heedless of anything spoken by those around her, and with her lips set and her eyes turning wildly from one to the other, held a gory handkerchief to his temple with one hand, and with the other felt for the motion of his heart.

But heroes don’t die, you know.

CHAPTER XXI

TRIBULATIONS AND TACTICS OF THE COUNTESS

‘You have murdered my brother, Rose Jocelyn!’

‘Don’t say so now.’

Such was the interchange between the two that loved the senseless youth, as he was being lifted into the carriage.

Lady Jocelyn sat upright in her saddle, giving directions about what was to be done with Evan and the mare, impartially.

’Stunned, and a good deal shaken, I suppose; Lymport’s knees are terribly cut,’ she said to Drummond, who merely nodded.  And Seymour remarked, ‘Fifty guineas knocked off her value!’ One added, ’Nothing worse, I should think’; and another, ‘A little damage inside, perhaps.’  Difficult to say whether they spoke of Evan or the brute.

No violent outcries; no reproaches cast on the cold-blooded coquette; no exclamations on the heroism of her brother!  They could absolutely spare a thought for the animal!  And Evan had risked his life for this, and might die unpitied.  The Countess diversified her grief with a deadly bitterness against the heartless Jocelyns.

Oh, if Evan dies! will it punish Rose sufficiently?

Andrew expressed emotion, but not of a kind the Countess liked a relative to be seen exhibiting; for in emotion worthy Andrew betrayed to her his origin offensively.

‘Go away and puke, if you must,’ she said, clipping poor Andrew’s word about his ‘dear boy.’  She could not help speaking in that way—­he was so vulgar.  A word of sympathy from Lady Jocelyn might have saved her from the sourness into which her many conflicting passions were resolving; and might also have saved her ladyship from the rancour she had sown in the daughter of the great Mel by her selection of epithets to characterize him.