y tread with her riding-habit drawn above her heels, he
could not help turning his head occasionally. She listened to Drummond
with attention, but presently broke from him, crying: 'It's an absurdity.
Speak to them yourself--I shall not.'

On the ride that day, she began prattling of this and that with the
careless glee that became her well, and then sank into a reverie.
Between-whiles her eyes had raised tumults in Evan's breast by dropping
on him in a sort of questioning way, as if she wished him to speak, or
wished to fathom something she would rather have unspoken. Ere they had
finished their ride, she tossed off what burden may have been on her mind
as lightly as a stray lock from her shoulders. He thought that the
singular look recurred. It charmed him too much for him to speculate on
it.

The Countess's opportune ally, the gout, which had reduced the Hon.
Melville Jocelyn's right hand to a state of uselessness, served her with
her brother equally: for, having volunteered his services to the
invalided diplomatist, it excused his stay at Beckley Court to himself,
and was a mask to his intimacy with Rose, besides earning him the thanks
of the family. Harry Jocelyn, released from the wing of the Countess,
came straight to him, and in a rough kind of way begged Evan to overlook
his rudeness.

'You took us all in at Fallow field, except Drummond,' he said. 'Drummond
would have it you were joking. I see it now. And you're a confoundedly
clever fellow into the bargain, or you wouldn't be quill-driving for
Uncle Mel. Don't be uppish about it--will you?'

'You have nothing to fear on that point,' said Evan. With which promise
the peace was signed between them. Drummond and William Harvey were
cordial, and just laughed over the incident. Laxley, however, held aloof.
His retention of ideas once formed befitted his rank and station. Some
trifling qualms attended Evan's labours with the diplomatist; but these
were merely occasioned by the iteration of a particular phrase. Mr.
Goren, an enthusiastic tailor, had now and then thrown out to Evan
stirring hints of an invention he claimed: the discovery of a Balance in
Breeches: apparently the philosopher's stone of the tailor craft, a
secret that should ensure harmony of outline to the person and an
indubitable accommodation to the most difficult legs.

Since Adam's expulsion, it seemed, the tailors of this wilderness had
been in search of it. But like the doctors of this wild