‘Yes; he will come,’ cried Rose; ’and he shall ride home with me and my friend Drummond; and he shall have my groom’s horse, if he doesn’t mind.  Bob can ride home in the cart with Polly, my maid; and he’ll like that, because Polly’s always good fun—­when they’re not in love with her.  Then, of course, she torments them.’

‘Naturally,’ said the Countess.

Mr. Evan Harrington’s final objection, based on his not having clothes, and so forth, was met by his foreseeing sister.

’I have your portmanteau packed, in with me, my dear brother; Conning has her feet on it.  I divined that I should overtake you.’

Evan felt he was in the toils.  After a struggle or two he yielded; and, having yielded, did it with grace.  In a moment, and with a power of self-compression equal to that of the adept Countess, he threw off his moodiness as easily as if it had been his Spanish mantle, and assumed a gaiety that made the Countess’s eyes beam rapturously upon him, and was pleasing to Rose, apart from the lead in admiration the Countess had given her—­not for the first time.  We mortals, the best of us, may be silly sheep in our likes and dislikes:  where there is no premeditated or instinctive antagonism, we can be led into warm acknowledgement of merits we have not sounded.  This the Countess de Saldar knew right well.

Rose now intimated her wish to perform the ceremony of introduction between her aunt and uncle present, and the visitors to Beckley Court.  The Countess smiled, and in the few paces that separated the two groups, whispered to her brother:  ‘Miss Jocelyn, my dear.’

The eye-glasses of the Beckley group were dropped with one accord.  The ceremony was gone through.  The softly-shadowed differences of a grand manner addressed to ladies, and to males, were exquisitely accomplished by the Countess de Saldar.

‘Harrington?  Harrington?’ her quick ear caught on the mouth of Squire Uplift, scanning Evan.

Her accent was very foreign, as she said aloud:  ’We are entirely strangers to your game—­your creecket.  My brother and myself are scarcely English.  Nothing save diplomacy are we adepts in!’

‘You must be excessively dangerous, madam,’ said Sir George, hat in air.

’Even in that, I fear, we are babes and sucklings, and might take many a lesson from you.  Will you instruct me in your creecket?  What are they doing now?  It seems very unintelligible—­indistinct—­is it not?’

Inasmuch as Farmer Broadmead and Master Nat Hodges were surrounded by a clamorous mob, shouting both sides of the case, as if the loudest and longest-winded were sure to wrest a favourable judgement from those two infallible authorities on the laws of cricket, the noble game was certainly in a state of indistinctness.

The squire came forward to explain, piteously entreated not to expect too much from a woman’s inapprehensive wits, which he plainly promised (under eyes that had melted harder men) he would not.  His forbearance and bucolic gallantry were needed, for he had the Countess’s radiant full visage alone.  Her senses were dancing in her right ear, which had heard the name of Lady Racial pronounced, and a voice respond to it from the carriage.