She had to enliven his stunned senses, and calm her own.  And with mournful images of her father in her brain, the female Spartan had to turn to Rose, and speculate on the girl’s reflective brows, while she said, as over a distant relative, sadly, but without distraction:  ’A death in the family!’ and preserved herself from weeping her heart out, that none might guess the thing who did not positively know it.  Evan touched the hand of Rose without meeting her eyes.  He was soon cast off in Mr. Goren’s boat.  Then the Countess murmured final adieux; twilight under her lids, but yet a smile, stately, affectionate, almost genial.  Rose, her sweet Rose, she must kiss.  She could have slapped Rose for appearing so reserved and cold.  She hugged Rose, as to hug oblivion of the last few minutes into her.  The girl leant her cheek, and bore the embrace, looking on her with a kind of wonder.

Only when alone with the Count, in the brewer’s carriage awaiting her on shore, did the lady give a natural course to her grief; well knowing that her Silva would attribute it to the darkness of their common exile.  She wept:  but in the excess of her misery, two words of strangely opposite signification, pronounced by Mr. Goren; two words that were at once poison and antidote, sang in her brain; two words that painted her dead father from head to foot, his nature and his fortune:  these were the Shop, and the Uniform.

Oh! what would she not have given to have-seen and bestowed on her beloved father one last kiss!  Oh! how she hoped that her inspired echo of Uniform, on board the Jocasta, had drowned the memory, eclipsed the meaning, of that fatal utterance of Shop!

CHAPTER V

THE FAMILY AND THE FUNERAL

It was the evening of the second day since the arrival of the black letter in London from Lymport, and the wife of the brewer and the wife of the Major sat dropping tears into one another’s laps, in expectation of their sister the Countess.  Mr. Andrew Cogglesby had not yet returned from his office.  The gallant Major had gone forth to dine with General Sir George Frebuter, the head of the Marines of his time.  It would have been difficult for the Major, he informed his wife, to send in an excuse to the General for non-attendance, without entering into particulars; and that he should tell the General he could not dine with him, because of the sudden decease of a tailor, was, as he let his wife understand, and requested her to perceive, quite out of the question.  So he dressed himself carefully, and though peremptory with his wife concerning his linen, and requiring natural services from her in the button department, and a casual expression of contentment as to his ultimate make-up, he left her that day without any final injunctions to occupy her mind, and she was at liberty to weep if she pleased, a privilege she did not enjoy undisturbed when he was present; for the warrior hated that weakness, and did not care to hide his contempt for it.