She tried to blame him.  It would not do.  She tried to think of that grovelling loathsome position painted to her by Lady Elburne’s graphic hand.  Evan dispersed the gloomy shades like sunshine.  Then in a sort of terror she rejoiced to think she was partially engaged to Ferdinand, and found herself crying again with exultation, that he had not kissed her:  for a kiss on her mouth was to Rose a pledge and a bond.

The struggle searched her through:  bared her weakness, probed her strength; and she, seeing herself, suffered grievously in her self-love.  Am I such a coward, inconstant, cold? she asked.  Confirmatory answers coming, flung her back under the shield of Ferdinand if for a moment her soul stood up armed and defiant, it was Evan’s hand she took.

To whom do I belong? was another terrible question.  In her ideas, if Evan was not chargeable with that baseness which had sundered them he might claim her yet, if he would.  If he did, what then?  Must she go to him?

Impossible:  she was in chains.  Besides, what a din of laughter there would be to see her led away by him.  Twisting her joined hands:  weeping for her cousin, as she thought, Rose passed hours of torment over Juliana’s legacy to her.

‘Why did I doubt him?’ she cried, jealous that any soul should have known and trusted him better.  Jealous and I am afraid that the kindling of that one feature of love relighted the fire of her passion thus fervidly.  To be outstripped in generosity was hateful to her.  Rose, naturally, could not reflect that a young creature like herself, fighting against the world, as we call it, has all her faculties at the utmost stretch, and is often betrayed by failing nature when the will is still valiant.

And here she sat-in chains!  ’Yes!  I am fit only to be the wife of an idle brainless man, with money and a title,’ she said, in extreme self-contempt.  She caught a glimpse of her whole life in the horrid tomb of his embrace, and questions whether she could yield her hand to him—­whether it was right in the eyes of heaven, rushed impetuously to console her, and defied anything in the shape of satisfactory affirmations.  Nevertheless, the end of the struggle was, that she felt that she was bound to Ferdinand.

‘But this I will do,’ said Rose, standing with heat-bright eyes and deep-coloured cheeks before the glass.  ’I will clear his character at Beckley.  I will help him.  I will be his friend.  I will wipe out the injustice I did him.’  And this bride-elect of a lord absolutely added that she was unworthy to be the wife of a tailor!

’He! how unequalled he is!  There is nothing he fears except shame.  Oh! how sad it will be for him to find no woman in his class to understand him and be his helpmate!’

Over, this sad subject, of which we must presume her to be accurately cognizant, Rose brooded heavily.  By mid-day she gave her Grandmother notice that she was going home to Juliana’s funeral.