their labour with needle and thread. Growing cognizant of the infamy of
his posture, the Countess begged Evan to drive him out of her sight, and
took a sniff at her smelling-bottle.

She went on: 'Now, dear Van, you would hear of your sweet Rose?'

'Not a word!' Evan hastily answered.

'Why, what does this indicate? Whims! Then you do love?'

'I tell you, Louisa, I don't want to hear a word of any of them,' said
Evan, with an angry gleam in his eyes. 'They are nothing to me, nor I to
them. I--my walk in life is not theirs.'

'Faint heart! faint heart!' the Countess lifted a proverbial forefinger.

'Thank heaven, I shall have the consolation of not going about, and
bowing and smirking like an impostor!' Evan exclaimed.

There was a wider intelligence in the Countess's arrested gaze than she
chose to fashion into speech.

'I knew,' she said, 'I knew how the air of this horrible Lymport would
act on you. But while I live, Evan, you shall not sink in the sludge.
You, with all the pains I have lavished on you! and with your presence!--
for you have a presence, so rare among young men in this England! You,
who have been to a Court, and interchanged bows with duchesses, and I
know not what besides--nay, I do not accuse you; but if you had not been
a mere boy, and an English boy-poor Eugenia herself confessed to me that
you had a look--a tender cleaving of the underlids--that made her catch