Evan reclined in the chariot, revolving his sensations.  In another mood he would have called, them thoughts, perhaps, and marvelled at their immensity.  The theme was Love and Death.  One might have supposed, from his occasional mutterings at the pace regulated by the postillion, that he was burning with anxiety to catch the flying coach.  He had forgotten it:  forgotten that he was giving chase to anything.  A pair of wondering feminine eyes pursued him, and made him fret for the miles to throw a thicker veil between him and them.  The serious level brows of Rose haunted the poor youth; and reflecting whither he was tending, and to what sight, he had shadowy touches of the holiness there is in death, from which came a conflict between the imaged phantoms of his father and of Rose, and he sided against his love with some bitterness.  His sisters, weeping for their father and holding aloof from his ashes, Evan swept from his mind.  He called up the man his father was:  the kindliness, the readiness, the gallant gaiety of the great Mel.  Youths are fascinated by the barbarian virtues; and to Evan, under present influences, his father was a pattern of manhood.  He asked himself:  Was it infamous to earn one’s bread? and answered it very strongly in his father’s favour.  The great Mel’s creditors were not by to show him another feature of the case.

Hitherto, in passive obedience to the indoctrination of the Countess, Evan had looked on tailors as the proscribed race of modern society.  He had pitied his father as a man superior to his fate; but despite the fitfully honest promptings with Rose (tempting to him because of the wondrous chivalry they argued, and at bottom false probably as the hypocrisy they affected to combat), he had been by no means sorry that the world saw not the spot on himself.  Other sensations beset him now.  Since such a man was banned by the world, which was to be despised?

The clear result of Evan’s solitary musing was to cast a sort of halo over Tailordom.  Death stood over the pale dead man, his father, and dared the world to sneer at him.  By a singular caprice of fancy, Evan had no sooner grasped this image, than it was suggested that he might as well inspect his purse, and see how much money he was master of.

Are you impatient with this young man?  He has little character for the moment.  Most youths are like Pope’s women; they have no character at all.  And indeed a character that does not wait for circumstances to shape it, is of small worth in the race that must be run.  To be set too early, is to take the work out of the hands of the Sculptor who fashions men.  Happily a youth is always at school, and if he was shut up and without mark two or three hours ago, he will have something to show you now:  as I have seen blooming seaflowers and other graduated organisms, when left undisturbed to their own action.  Where the Fates have designed that he shall present his figure in a story, this is sure to happen.