‘What if he does-double, or treble?’ cried Evan, impetuously; and to avoid the theme, and cast off the bad impression it produced on him, he rubbed his hands, and said:  ’I want to talk to you about my prospects, mother.’

‘What are they?’ Mrs. Mel inquired.

The severity of her mien and sceptical coldness of her speech caused him to inspect them suddenly, as if she had lent him her eyes.  He put them by, till the gold should recover its natural shine, saying:  ’By the way, mother, I ‘ve written the half of a History of Portugal.’

‘Have you?’ said Mrs. Mel.  ‘For Louisa?’

’No, mother, of course not:  to sell it.  Albuquerque! what a splendid fellow he was!’

Informing him that he knew she abominated foreign names, she said:  ’And your prospects are, writing Histories of Portugal?’

’No, mother.  I was going to tell you, I expect a Government appointment.  Mr. Jocelyn likes my work—­I think he likes me.  You know, I was his private secretary for ten months.’

‘You write a good hand,’ his mother interposed.

‘And I’m certain I was born for diplomacy.’

’For an easy chair, and an ink-dish before you, and lacqueys behind.  What’s to be your income, Van?’

Evan carelessly remarked that he must wait and see.

‘A very proper thing to do,’ said Mrs. Mel; for now that she had fixed him to some explanation of his prospects, she could condescend in her stiff way to banter.

Slightly touched by it, Evan pursued, half laughing, as men do who wish to propitiate common sense on behalf of what seems tolerably absurd:  ’It ’s not the immediate income, you know, mother:  one thinks of one’s future.  In the diplomatic service, as Louisa says, you come to be known to Ministers gradually, I mean.  That is, they hear of you; and if you show you have some capacity—­Louisa wants me to throw it up in time, and stand for Parliament.  Andrew, she thinks, would be glad to help me to his seat.  Once in Parliament, and known to Ministers, you—­your career is open to you.’

In justice to Mr. Evan Harrington, it must be said, he built up this extraordinary card-castle to dazzle his mother’s mind:  he had lost his right grasp of her character for the moment, because of an undefined suspicion of something she intended, and which sent him himself to take refuge in those flimsy structures; while the very altitude he reached beguiled his imagination, and made him hope to impress hers.

Mrs. Mel dealt it one fillip.  ’And in the meantime how are you to live, and pay the creditors?’

Though Evan answered cheerfully, ’Oh, they will wait, and I can live on anything,’ he was nevertheless floundering on the ground amid the ruins of the superb edifice; and his mother, upright and rigid, continuing, ’You can live on anything, and they will wait, and call your father a rogue,’ he started, grievously bitten by one of the serpents of earth.