ral. He judged
by all the points he knew of: a firm voice, a brief commanding style, an
apparent indifference to expense, and the inexplicable minor
characteristics, such as polished boots, and a striking wristband, and so
forth, which will show a creature accustomed to step over the heads of
men. He had, therefore, no particular anxiety to part company, and jogged
easily on the white highway, beneath a moon that walked high and small
over marble clouds.
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. De
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