em, the Countess de Saldar
drove up.

'My dearest Rose!' and 'My dear Countess!' and 'Not Louisa, then?' and,
'I am very glad to see you!' without attempting the endearing
'Louisa'--passed.

The Countess de Saldar then admitted the presence of her brother.

'Think!' said Rose. 'He talks of going on straight from here to London.'

'That pretty pout will alone suffice to make him deviate, then,' said the
Countess, with her sweetest open slyness. 'I am now on the point of
accepting your most kind invitation. Our foreign habits allow us to visit
thus early! He will come with me.'

Evan tried to look firm, and speak as he was trying to look. Rose fell to
entreaty, and from entreaty rose to command; and in both was utterly
fascinating to the poor youth. Luxuriously--while he hesitated and dwelt
on this and that faint objection--his spirit drank the delicious changes
of her face. To have her face before him but one day seemed so rich a
boon to deny himself, that he was beginning to wonder at his constancy in
refusal; and now that she spoke to him so pressingly, devoting her
guileless eyes to him alone, he forgot a certain envious feeling that had
possessed him while she was rattling among the other males--a doubt
whether she ever cast a thought on Mr. Evan Harrington.

'Yes; he will come,' cried Rose; 'and he shall ride home with me and my
friend Drummond; and he shall have my groom's horse, if he doesn't mind.
Bob can ride home in the cart with Polly, my maid; and he'll like that,
because Polly's always good fun--when they're not in love with her. Then,
of course, she torments them.'

'Naturally,' said the Countess.

Mr. Evan Harrington's final objection, based on his not having clothes,
and so forth, was met by his foreseeing sister.

'I have your portmanteau packed, in with me, my dear brother; Conning has
her feet on it. I divined that I should overtake you.'

Evan felt he was in the toils. After a struggle or two he yielded; and,
having yielded, did it with grace. In a moment, and with a power of
self-compression equal to that of the adept Countess, he threw off his
moodiness as easily as if it had been his Spanish mantle, and assumed a
gaiety that made the Countess's eyes beam rapturously upon him, and was
pleasing to Rose, apart from the lead in admiration the Countess had
given her--not for the first time. We mortals, the best of us, may be
silly sheep in our likes and dislikes: where there is no premeditate