Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/260

17, 1860.] the curtains, and the counterpanes, and everything burnt. He told us it himself. You must remember it, Louisa?”

The Countess remembered nothing of the sort. No doubt could exist of its having been the Portuguese Marquis de Col, because he had confided to her the whole affair, and indeed come to her, as his habit was, to ask her what he could possibly do, under the circumstances. If Mrs. Fiske’s friend, who married the Devonshire person, had seen the same thing, the coincidence was yet more extraordinary than the case. Mrs. Fiske said, it assuredly was, and glanced at her aunt, who, as the Countess now rose, declaring she must speak to Evan, chid Mrs. Fiske and wished her and Peter Smithers at the bottom of the sea.

“No, no, Mama,” said the Countess, laughing, “that would hardly be proper,” and before Mrs. Fiske could reply, escaped to complain to Evan of the vulgarity of those women.

She was not prepared for the burst of wrath with which Evan met her.

“Louisa,” said he, taking her wrist sternly, “you have done a thing I can’t forgive. I find it hard to bear disgrace myself: I will not consent to bring it upon others. Why did you dare to couple Miss Jocelyn’s name with mine?”

The Countess gave him out her arm’s length. “Speak on, Van,” she said, admiring him with a bright gaze.

“Answer me, Louisa; and don’t take me for a fool any more,” he pursued. “You have coupled Miss Jocelyn’s name with mine, in company, and I insist now upon your giving me your promise to abstain from doing it anywhere, before anybody.”

“If she saw you at this instant, Van,” returned the incorrigible Countess, “would she desire it, think you? Oh! I must make you angry before her, I see that! You have your father’s frown. You surpass him, for your delivery is more correct, and equally fluent. And if a woman is momentarily melted by softness in a man, she is for ever subdued by boldness and bravery of mien.”

Evan dropped her hand. “Miss Jocelyn has done me the honour to call me her friend. That was in other days.” His lip quivered. “I shall not see Miss Jocelyn again. Yes; I would lay down my life for her; but that’s idle talk. No such chance will ever come to me. But I can save her from being spoken of in alliance with me, and what I am, and I tell you, Louisa, I will not have it.” Saying which, and while he looked harshly at her, wounded pride bled through his eyes.

She was touched. “Sit down, dear; I must explain to you, and make you happy against your will,” she said, in another voice, and an English accent. “The mischief is done, Van. If you do not want Rose Jocelyn to love you, you must undo it in your own way. I am not easily deceived. On the morning I went to her house in town, she took me aside, and spoke to me. Not a confession in words. The blood in her cheeks, when I mentioned you, did that for her. Everything about you she must know—how you bore your grief, and all. And not in her usual free manner, but timidly, as if she feared a surprise, or feared to be wakened to the secret in her bosom she half suspects. ‘Tell him!’ she said, ‘I hope he will not forget me. ”

The Countess was interrupted by a great sob; for the picture of frank Rose Jocelyn changed, and soft, and, as it were, shadowed under a veil of bashful regard for him, so filled the young man with sorrowful tenderness, that he trembled, and was as a child.

Marking the impression she had produced on him, and having worn off that which he had produced on her, the Countess resumed the art in her style of speech, easier to her than nature.

“So the sweetest of Roses may be yours, dear Van; and you have her in a gold setting, to wear on your heart. Are you not enviable? I will not—no, I will not tell you she is perfect. I must fashion the sweet young creature. Though I am very ready to admit that she is much improved by this—shall I call it, desired consummation?”

Evan could listen no more. Such a struggle was rising in his breast: the effort to quench what the Countess had so fiercely kindled: passionate desire to look on Rose but for one lightning flash: desire to look on her, and muffled sense of shame twin-born with it: wild love and leaden misery mixed: dead hopelessness and vivid hope. Up to the neck in Purgatory, but his soul saturated with visions of Bliss! The fair orb of Love was all that was wanted to complete his planetary state, and aloft it sprang, showing many faint, fair tracts to him, and piling huge darknesses.

As if in search of something, he suddenly went from the room.

“I have intoxicated the poor boy,” said the Countess, and consulted an attitude by the evening light in a mirror. Approving the result, she rang for her mother, and sat with her till dark; telling her she could not and would not leave her dear Mama that night. At the supper-table Evan did not appear, and Mr. Goren, after taking counsel of Mrs. Mel, dispersed the news that Evan was off to London. On the road again, with a purse just as ill furnished, and in his breast the light that sometimes leads gentlemen, as well as ladies, astray.

day had at length arrived when the cause of outraged womanhood, in the person of Mrs. Barber, was to be avenged. I had lain awake half the night, meditating on that amiable lady’s wrongs; and when sleep visited my feverish eyelids, even in my dreams, I continued to persecute her monster of a husband. I imagined myself to be addressing the Court in the lady’s behalf, in the character of amicus curiæ, and so withering were my sarcasms—so full of tenderness and pathos my description of the agonised wife and mother—that Sir, raising his hand, implored me to desist for a moment, and directed that the jury should be supplied with fresh pocket-handkerchiefs