’Or there is the Portuguese widow, the Rostral.  She’s thirty, certainly; but she possesses millions!  Estates all over the kingdom, and the sweetest creature.  But, no.  Evan would be out of the way there, certainly.  But—­our women are very nice:  they have the dearest, sweetest ways:  but I would rather Evan did not marry one of them.  And then there ‘s the religion!’

This was a sore of the Countess’s own, and she dropped a tear in coming across it.

‘No, my dears, it shall be Rose Jocelyn!’ she concluded:  ’I will take Evan over with me, and see that he has opportunities.  It shall be Rose, and then I can call her mine; for in verity I love the child.’

It is not my part to dispute the Countess’s love for Miss Jocelyn; and I have only to add that Evan, unaware of the soft training he was to undergo, and the brilliant chance in store for him, offered no impediment to the proposition that he should journey to Portugal with his sister (whose subtlest flattery was to tell him that she should not be ashamed to own him there); and ultimately, furnished with cash for the trip by the remonstrating brewer, went.

So these Parcae, daughters of the shears, arranged and settled the young man’s fate.  His task was to learn the management of his mouth, how to dress his shoulders properly, and to direct his eyes—­rare qualities in man or woman, I assure you; the management of the mouth being especially admirable, and correspondingly difficult.  These achieved, he was to place his battery in position, and win the heart and hand of an heiress.

Our comedy opens with his return from Portugal, in company with Miss Rose, the heiress; the Honourable Melville Jocelyn, the diplomate; and the Count and Countess de Saldar, refugees out of that explosive little kingdom.

CHAPTER IV

ON BOARD THE JOCASTA

From the Tagus to the Thames the Government sloop-of-war, Jocasta, had made a prosperous voyage, bearing that precious freight, a removed diplomatist and his family; for whose uses let a sufficient vindication be found in the exercise he affords our crews in the science of seamanship.  She entered our noble river somewhat early on a fine July morning.  Early as it was, two young people, who had nothing to do with the trimming or guiding of the vessel, stood on deck, and watched the double-shore, beginning to embrace them more and more closely as they sailed onward.  One, a young lady, very young in manner, wore a black felt hat with a floating scarlet feather, and was clad about the shoulders in a mantle of foreign style and pattern.  The other you might have taken for a wandering Don, were such an object ever known; so simply he assumed the dusky sombrero and dangling cloak, of which one fold was flung across his breast and drooped behind him.  The line of an adolescent dark moustache ran along his lip, and only at intervals could you see that his eyes were blue and of the land he was nearing.  For the youth was meditative, and held his head much down.  The young lady, on the contrary, permitted an open inspection of her countenance, and seemed, for the moment at least, to be neither caring nor thinking of what kind of judgement would be passed on her.  Her pretty nose was up, sniffing the still salt breeze with vivacious delight.