The Countess imagined she had produced an impression.  Evan said:  ’Yes, and I should have liked to have told her this morning that I’m myself nothing more than the son of a—­’

’Stop! cried his sister, glancing about in horror.  The admiring lieutenant met her eye.  Blandishingly she smiled on him:  ’Most beautiful weather for a welcome to dear England?’ and passed with majesty.

‘Boy!’ she resumed, ‘are you mad?’

‘I hate being such a hypocrite, madam.’

‘Then you do not love her, Evan?’

This may have been dubious logic, but it resulted from a clear sequence of ideas in the lady’s head.  Evan did not contest it.

’And assuredly you will lose her, Evan.  Think of my troubles!  I have to intrigue for Silva; I look to your future; I smile, Oh heaven! how do I not smile when things are spoken that pierce my heart!  This morning at the breakfast!’

Evan took her hand, and patted it.

‘What is your pity?’ she sighed.

’If it had not been for you, my dear sister, I should never have held my tongue.’

‘You are not a Harrington!  You are a Dawley!’ she exclaimed, indignantly.

Evan received the accusation of possessing more of his mother’s spirit than his father’s in silence.

‘You would not have held your tongue,’ she said, with fervid severity:  ’and you would have betrayed yourself! and you would have said you were that! and you in that costume!  Why, goodness gracious! could you bear to appear so ridiculous?’

The poor young man involuntarily surveyed his person.  The pains of an impostor seized him.  The deplorable image of the Don making confession became present to his mind.  It was a clever stroke of this female intriguer.  She saw him redden grievously, and blink his eyes; and not wishing to probe him so that he would feel intolerable disgust at his imprisonment in the Don, she continued: 

’But you have the sense to see your duties, Evan.  You have an excellent sense, in the main.  No one would dream—­to see you.  You did not, I must say, you did not make enough of your gallantry.  A Portuguese who had saved a man’s life, Evan, would he have been so boorish?  You behaved as if it was a matter of course that you should go overboard after anybody, in your clothes, on a dark night.  So, then, the Jocelyns took it.  I barely heard one compliment to you.  And Rose—­what an effect it should have had on her!  But, owing to your manner, I do believe the girl thinks it nothing but your ordinary business to go overboard after anybody, in your clothes, on a dark night.  ’Pon my honour, I believe she expects to see you always dripping!’ The Countess uttered a burst of hysterical humour.  ’So you miss your credit.  That inebriated sailor should really have been gold to you.  Be not so young and thoughtless.’

The Countess then proceeded to tell him how foolishly he had let slip his great opportunity.  A Portuguese would have fixed the young lady long before.  By tender moonlight, in captivating language, beneath the umbrageous orange-groves, a Portuguese would have accurately calculated the effect of the perfume of the blossom on her sensitive nostrils, and know the exact moment when to kneel, and declare his passion sonorously.