What could Mrs. Shorne do with a mother who talked in this manner?  Mrs. Melville, when she arrived to take part in the conference, which gradually swelled to a family one, was equally unable to make Lady Jocelyn perceive that her plan of bringing up Rose was, in the present result of it, other than unlucky.

Now the two Generals—­Rose Jocelyn and the Countess de Saldar—­had brought matters to this pass; and from the two tactical extremes:  the former by openness and dash; the latter by subtlety, and her own interpretations of the means extended to her by Providence.  I will not be so bold as to state which of the two I think right.  Good and evil work together in this world.  If the Countess had not woven the tangle, and gained Evan time, Rose would never have seen his blood,—­never have had her spirit hurried out of all shows and forms and habits of thought, up to the gates of existence, as it were, where she took him simply as God created him and her, and clave to him.  Again, had Rose been secret, when this turn in her nature came, she would have forfeited the strange power she received from it, and which endowed her with decision to say what was in her heart, and stamp it lastingly there.  The two Generals were quite antagonistic, but no two, in perfect ignorance of one another’s proceedings, ever worked so harmoniously toward the main result.  The Countess was the skilful engineer:  Rose the General of cavalry.  And it did really seem that, with Tom Cogglesby and his thousands in reserve, the victory was about to be gained.  The male Jocelyns, an easy race, decided that, if the worst came to the worst, and Rose proved a wonder, there was money, which was something.

But social prejudice was about to claim its champion.  Hitherto there had been no General on the opposite side.  Love, aided by the Countess, had engaged an inert mass.  The champion was discovered in the person of the provincial Don Juan, Mr. Harry Jocelyn.  Harry had gone on a mysterious business of his own to London.  He returned with a green box under his arm, which, five minutes after his arrival, was entrusted to Conning, in company with a genial present for herself, of a kind not perhaps so fit for exhibition; at least they both thought so, for it was given in the shades.  Harry then went to pay his respects to his mother, who received him with her customary ironical tolerance.  His father, to whom he was an incarnation of bother, likewise nodded to him and gave him a finger.  Duty done, Harry looked round him for pleasure, and observed nothing but glum faces.  Even the face of John Raikes was, heavy.  He had been hovering about the Duke and Miss Current for an hour, hoping the Countess would come and give him a promised introduction.  The Countess stirred not from above, and Jack drifted from group to group on the lawn, and grew conscious that wherever he went he brought silence with him.  His isolation made him humble, and when Harry shook his hand, and said he remembered Fallow field and the fun there, Mr. Raikes thanked him.