'I will not let this last another hour,' said Evan, firmly, at the same
time seeking to caress her. She spurned his fruitless affection,
feeling, nevertheless, how cruel was her fate; for, with any other save a
brother, she had arts at her disposal to melt the manliest resolutions.
The glass showed her that her face was pathetically pale; the tones of
her voice were rich and harrowing. What did they avail with a brother?
'Promise me,' she cried eagerly, 'promise me to stop here--on this spot-
till I return.'

The promise was extracted. The Countess went to fetch Caroline.
Evan did not count the minutes. One thought was mounting in his brain-
the scorn of Rose. He felt that he had lost her. Lost her when he had
just won her! He felt it, without realizing it. The first blows of an
immense grief are dull, and strike the heart through wool, as it were.
The belief of the young in their sorrow has to be flogged into them, on
the good old educational principle. Could he do less than this he was
about to do? Rose had wedded her noble nature to him, and it was as much
her spirit as his own that urged him thus to forfeit her, to be worthy of
her by assuming unworthiness.

There he sat neither conning over his determination nor the cause for it,
revolving Rose's words about Laxley, and nothing else. The words were so
sweet and so bitter; every now and then the heavy smiting on his heart
set it quivering and leaping, as the whip starts a jaded horse.

Meantime the Countess was participating in a witty conversation in the
drawing-room with Sir John and the Duke, Miss Current, and others; and it
was not till after she had displayed many graces, and, as one or two
ladies presumed to consider, marked effrontery, that she rose and drew