Nothing further passed between them. Caroline
went to the Countess: Evan waited for Rose.
The sun was getting high. The face of the stream
glowed like metal. Why did she not come?
She believed him guilty from the mouth of another?
If so, there was something less for him to lose.
And now the sacrifice he had made did whisper a tale
of mortal magnificence in his ears: feelings
that were not his noblest stood up exalted. He
waited till the warm meadow-breath floating past told
that the day had settled into heat, and then he waited
no more, but quietly walked into the house with the
strength of one who has conquered more than human scorn.
THE RETREAT FROM BECKLEY
Never would the Countess believe that brother of hers,
idiot as by nature he might be, and heir to unnumbered
epithets, would so far forget what she had done for
him, as to drag her through the mud for nothing:
and so she told Caroline again and again, vehemently.
It was about ten minutes before the time for descending
to the breakfast-table. She was dressed, and
sat before the glass, smoothing her hair, and applying
the contents of a pot of cold cream to her forehead
between-whiles. With perfect sincerity she repeated
that she could not believe it. She had only trusted
Evan once since their visit to Beckley; and that this
once he should, when treated as a man, turn traitor
to their common interests, and prove himself an utter
baby, was a piece of nonsense her great intelligence
indignantly rejected.
‘Then, if true,’ she answered Caroline’s
assurances finally, ’if true, he is not his
father’s son!’
By which it may be seen that she had indeed taken
refuge in the Castle of Negation against the whole
army of facts.
’He is acting, Carry. He is acting the
ideas of his ridiculous empty noddle!’
‘No,’ said Caroline, mournfully, ’he
is not. I have never known Evan to lie.’
’Then you must forget the whipping he once had
from his mother—little dolt! little selfish
pig! He obtains his reputation entirely from his
abominable selfishness, and then stands tall, and asks
us to admire him. He bursts with vanity.
But if you lend your credence to it, Carry, how, in
the name of goodness, are you to appear at the breakfast?
‘I was going to ask you whether you would come,’
said Caroline, coldly.
‘If I can get my hair to lie flat by any means
at all, of course!’ returned the Countess.
’This dreadful horrid country pomade! Why
did we not bring a larger stock of the Andalugian
Regenerator? Upon my honour, my dear, you use
a most enormous quantity; I must really tell you that.’
Conning here entered to say that Mr. Evan had given
orders for the boxes to be packed and everything got
ready to depart by half-past eleven o’clock,
when the fly would call for them and convey them to
Fallow field in time to meet the coach for London.
