an exchange of cordialities, said, at arm’s length:  ‘Good-bye, sir.’  Melville also gave him that greeting stiffly.  Harry was perceived to rush to the other end of the room, in quest of a fly apparently.  Poor Caroline’s heart ached for her brother, to see him standing there in the shadow of many faces.  But he was not left to stand alone.  Andrew quitted the circle of Sir John, Seymour Jocelyn, Mr. George Uplift, and others, and linked his arm to Evan’s.  Rose had gone.  While Evan looked for her despairingly to say his last word and hear her voice once more, Sir Franks said to his wife: 

‘See that Rose keeps up-stairs.’

‘I want to speak to her,’ was her ladyship’s answer, and she moved to the door.

Evan made way for her, bowing.

‘You will be ready at half-past eleven, Louisa,’ he said, with calm distinctness, and passed from that purgatory.

Now honest Andrew attributed the treatment Evan met with to the exposure of yesterday.  He was frantic with democratic disgust.

’Why the devil don’t they serve me like that; eh?  ’Cause I got a few coppers!  There, Van!  I’m a man of peace; but if you’ll call any man of ’em out I’ll stand your second—­’pon my soul, I will.  They must be cowards, so there isn’t much to fear.  Confound the fellows, I tell ’em every day I’m the son of a cobbler, and egad, they grow civiller.  What do they mean?  Are cobblers ranked over tailors?’

‘Perhaps that’s it,’ said Evan.

‘Hang your gentlemen!’ Andrew cried.

‘Let us have breakfast first,’ uttered a melancholy voice near them in the passage.

‘Jack!’ said Evan.  ‘Where have you been?’

‘I didn’t know the breakfast-room,’ Jack returned, ’and the fact is, my spirits are so down, I couldn’t muster up courage to ask one of the footmen.  I delivered your letter.  Nothing hostile took place.  I bowed fiercely to let him know what he might expect.  That generally stops it.  You see, I talk prose.  I shall never talk anything else!’

Andrew recommenced his jests of yesterday with Jack.  The latter bore them patiently, as one who had endured worse.

‘She has rejected me!’ he whispered to Evan.  ’Talk of the ingratitude of women!  Ten minutes ago I met her.  She perked her eyebrows at me!—­tried to run away.  “Miss Wheedle”:  I said.  “If you please, I ’d rather not,” says she.  To cut it short, the sacrifice I made to her was the cause.  It’s all over the house.  She gave the most excruciating hint.  Those low-born females are so horribly indelicate.  I stood confounded.  Commending his new humour, Evan persuaded him to breakfast immediately, and hunger being one of Jack’s solitary incitements to a sensible course of conduct, the disconsolate gentleman followed its dictates.  ’Go with him, Andrew,’ said Evan.  ’He is here as my friend, and may be made uncomfortable.’

‘Yes, yes,—­ha! ha!  I’ll follow the poor chap,’ said Andrew.  ’But what is it all about?  Louisa won’t go, you know.  Has the girl given you up because she saw your mother, Van?  I thought it was all right.  Why the deuce are you running away?’