She had baffled his little cross-examination with regard to Raikes, but on the other point he was firm.  She would listen to nothing:  she affected that her mandate had gone forth, and must be obeyed; tapped with her foot, fanned deliberately, and was a consummate queen, till he turned the handle of the door, when her complexion deadened, she started up, trembling, and tripping towards him, caught him by the arm, and said:  ’Stop!  After all that I have sacrificed for you!  As well try to raise the dead as a Dawley from the dust he grovels in!  Why did I consent to visit this place?  It was for you.  I came, I heard that you had disgraced yourself in drunkenness at Fallow field, and I toiled to eclipse that, and I did.  Young Jocelyn thought you were what you are I could spit the word at you! and I dazzled him to give you time to win this minx, who will spin you like a top if you get her.  That Mr. Forth knew it as well, and that vile young Laxley.  They are gone!  Why are they gone?  Because they thwarted me—­they crossed your interests—­I said they should go.  George Uplift is going to-day.  The house is left to us; and I believe firmly that Mrs. Bonner’s will contains a memento of the effect of our frequent religious conversations.  So you would leave now?  I suspect nobody, but we are all human, and Wills would not have been tampered with for the first time.  Besides, and the Countess’s imagination warmed till she addressed her brother as a confederate, ’we shall then see to whom Beckley Court is bequeathed.  Either way it may be yours.  Yours! and you suffer their plots to drive you forth.  Do you not perceive that Mama was brought here to-day on purpose to shame us and cast us out?  We are surrounded by conspiracies, but if our faith is pure who can hurt us?  If I had not that consolation—­would that you had it, too!—­would it be endurable to me to see those menials whispering and showing their forced respect?  As it is, I am fortified to forgive them.  I breathe another atmosphere.  Oh, Evan! you did not attend to Mr. Parsley’s beautiful last sermon.  The Church should have been your vocation.’

From vehemence the Countess had subsided to a mournful gentleness.  She had been too excited to notice any changes in her brother’s face during her speech, and when he turned from the door, and still eyeing her fixedly, led her to a chair, she fancied from his silence that she had subdued and convinced him.  A delicious sense of her power, succeeded by a weary reflection that she had constantly to employ it, occupied her mind, and when presently she looked up from the shade of her hand, it was to agitate her head pitifully at her brother.

‘All this you have done for me, Louisa,’ he said.

‘Yes, Evan,—­all!’ she fell into his tone.

’And you are the cause of Laxley’s going?  Did you know anything of that anonymous letter?’

He was squeezing her hand-with grateful affection, as she was deluded to imagine.