Sir Franks groaned at the thought.

‘How much does he offer to settle on them?’ he asked.

’A thousand a year on the marriage, and the same amount to the first child.  I daresay the end would be that they would get all.’

Sir Franks nodded, and remained with one eye-brow pitiably elevated above the level of the other.

‘Anything but a tailor!’ he exclaimed presently, half to himself.

‘There is a prejudice against that craft,’ her ladyship acquiesced.  ’Beranger—­let me see—­your favourite Frenchman, Franks, wasn’t it his father?—­no, his grandfather.  “Mon pauvre et humble grand-pyre,” I think, was a tailor.  Hum! the degrees of the thing, I confess, don’t affect me.  One trade I imagine to be no worse than another.’

‘Ferdinand’s allowance is about a thousand,’ said Sir Franks, meditatively.

‘And won’t be a farthing more till he comes to the title,’ added her ladyship.

‘Well,’ resumed Sir Franks, ‘it’s a horrible bother!’

His wife philosophically agreed with him, and the subject was dropped.

Lady Jocelyn felt with her husband, more than she chose to let him know, and Sir Franks could have burst into anathemas against fate and circumstances, more than his love of a smooth world permitted.  He, however, was subdued by her calmness; and she, with ten times the weight of brain, was manoeuvred by the wonderful dash of General Rose Jocelyn.  For her ladyship, thinking, ‘I shall get the blame of all this,’ rather sided insensibly with the offenders against those who condemned them jointly; and seeing that Rose had been scrupulously honest and straightforward in a very delicate matter, this lady was so constituted that she could not but applaud her daughter in her heart.  A worldly woman would have acted, if she had not thought, differently; but her ladyship was not a worldly woman.

Evan’s bearing and character had, during his residence at Beckley Court, become so thoroughly accepted as those of a gentleman, and one of their own rank, that, after an allusion to the origin of his breeding, not a word more was said by either of them on that topic.  Besides, Rose had dignified him by her decided conduct.

By the time poor Sir Franks had read himself into tranquillity, Mrs. Shorne, who knew him well, and was determined that he should not enter upon his usual negociations with an unpleasantness:  that is to say, to forget it, joined them in the library, bringing with her Sir John Loring and Hamilton Jocelyn.  Her first measure was to compel Sir Franks to put down his book.  Lady Jocelyn subsequently had to do the same.

‘Well, what have you done, Franks?’ said Mrs. Shorne.

‘Done?’ answered the poor gentleman.  ’What is there to be done?  I’ve spoken to young Harrington.’

’Spoken to him!  He deserves horsewhipping!  Have you not told him to quit the house instantly?’

Lady Jocelyn came to her husband’s aid:  ’It wouldn’t do, I think, to kick him out.  In the first place, he hasn’t deserved it.’