So much his sister Louisa.  His sister Harriet offered him her house for a home in London, thence to project his new career.  His sister Caroline sought a word with him in private, but only to weep bitterly in his arms, and utter a faint moan of regret at marriages in general.  He loved this beautiful creature the best of his three sisters (partly, it may be, because he despised her superior officer), and tried with a few smothered words to induce her to accompany him:  but she only shook her fair locks and moaned afresh.  Mr. Andrew, in the farewell squeeze of the hand at the street-door, asked him if he wanted anything.  He negatived the requirement of anything whatever, with an air of careless decision, though he was aware that his purse barely contained more than would take him the distance, but the instincts of this amateur gentleman were very fine and sensitive on questions of money.  His family had never known him beg for a shilling, or admit his necessity for a penny:  nor could he be made to accept money unless it was thrust into his pocket.  Somehow his sisters had forgotten this peculiarity of his.  Harriet only remembered it when too late.

‘But I dare say Andrew has supplied him,’ she said.

Andrew being interrogated, informed her what had passed between them.

‘And you think a Harrington would confess he wanted money!’ was her scornful exclamation.  ’Evan would walk—­he would die rather.  It was treating him like a mendicant.’

Andrew had to shrink in his brewer’s skin.

By some fatality all who were doomed to sit and listen to the Countess de
Saldar, were sure to be behindhand in an appointment.

When the young man arrived at the coach-office, he was politely informed that the vehicle, in which a seat had been secured for him, was in close alliance with time and tide, and being under the same rigid laws, could not possibly have waited for him, albeit it had stretched a point to the extent of a pair of minutes, at the urgent solicitation of a passenger.

‘A gentleman who speaks so, sir,’ said a volunteer mimic of the office, crowing and questioning from his throat in Goren’s manner.  ’Yok! yok!  That was how he spoke, sir.’

Evan reddened, for it brought the scene on board the Jocasta vividly to his mind.  The heavier business obliterated it.  He took counsel with the clerks of the office, and eventually the volunteer mimic conducted him to certain livery stables, where Evan, like one accustomed to command, ordered a chariot to pursue the coach, received a touch of the hat for a lordly fee, and was soon rolling out of London.

CHAPTER VI

MY GENTLEMAN ON THE ROAD

The postillion had every reason to believe that he carried a real gentleman behind him; in other words, a purse long and liberal.  He judged by all the points he knew of:  a firm voice, a brief commanding style, an apparent indifference to expense, and the inexplicable minor characteristics, such as polished boots, and a striking wristband, and so forth, which will show a creature accustomed to step over the heads of men.  He had, therefore, no particular anxiety to part company, and jogged easily on the white highway, beneath a moon that walked high and small over marble clouds.