‘Dear Van! do you love her so much?’

Caroline knew too well that she was shutting her own theme with iron clasps when she once touched on Evan’s.

Love her?  Love Rose?  It became an endless carol with Evan.  Caroline sighed for him from her heart.

‘You know—­you understand me; don’t you?’ he said, after a breathless excursion of his fancy.

’I believe you love her, dear.  I think I have never loved any one but my one brother.’

His love for Rose he could pour out to Caroline; when it came to Rose’s love for him his blood thickened, and his tongue felt guilty.  He must speak to her, he said,—­tell her all.

‘Yes, tell her all,’ echoed Caroline.  ’Do, do tell her.  Trust a woman utterly if she loves you, dear.  Go to her instantly.’

‘Could you bear it?’ said Evan.  He began to think it was for the sake of his sisters that he had hesitated.

’Bear it? bear anything rather than perpetual imposture.  What have I not borne?  Tell her, and then, if she is cold to you, let us go.  Let us go.  I shall be glad to.  Ah, Van!  I love you so.’  Caroline’s voice deepened.  ’I love you so, my dear.  You won’t let your new love drive me out?  Shall you always love me?’

Of that she might be sure, whatever happened.

‘Should you love me, Van, if evil befel me?’

Thrice as well, he swore to her.

’But if I—­if I, Van Oh! my life is intolerable!  Supposing I should ever disgrace you in any way, and not turn out all you fancied me.  I am very weak and unhappy.’

Evan kissed her confidently, with a warm smile.  He said a few words of the great faith he had in her:  words that were bitter comfort to Caroline.  This brother, who might save her, to him she dared not speak.  Did she wish to be saved?  She only knew that to wound Evan’s sense of honour and the high and chivalrous veneration for her sex and pride in himself and those of his blood, would be wicked and unpardonable, and that no earthly pleasure could drown it.  Thinking this, with her hands joined in pale dejection, Caroline sat silent, and Evan left her to lay bare his heart to Rose.  On his way to find Rose he was stopped by the announcement of the arrival of Mr. Raikes, who thrust a bundle of notes into his hand, and after speaking loudly of ‘his curricle,’ retired on important business, as he said, with a mysterious air.  ’I ’m beaten in many things, but not in the article Luck,’ he remarked; ’you will hear of me, though hardly as a tutor in this academy.’

Scanning the bundle of notes, without a reflection beyond the thought that money was in his hand; and wondering at the apparition of the curricle, Evan was joined by Harry Jocelyn, and Harry linked his arm in Evan’s and plunged with extraordinary spontaneity and candour into the state of his money affairs.  What the deuce he was to do for money he did not know.  From the impressive manner in which he put it, it appeared