out distraction: 'A
death in the family!' and preserved herself from weeping her heart out,
that none might guess the thing who did not positively know it. Evan
touched the hand of Rose without meeting her eyes. He was soon cast off
in Mr. Goren's boat. Then the Countess murmured final adieux; twilight
under her lids, but yet a smile, stately, affectionate, almost genial.
Rose, her sweet Rose, she must kiss. She could have slapped Rose for
appearing so reserved and cold. She hugged Rose, as to hug oblivion of
the last few minutes into her. The girl leant her cheek, and bore the
embrace, looking on her with a kind of wonder.

Only when alone with the Count, in the brewer's carriage awaiting her
on shore, did the lady give a natural course to her grief; well knowing
that her Silva would attribute it to the darkness of their common
exile. She wept: but in the excess of her misery, two words of strangely
opposite signification, pronounced by Mr. Goren; two words that were at
once poison and antidote, sang in her brain; two words that painted her
dead father from head to foot, his nature and his fortune: these were
the Shop, and the Uniform.

Oh! what would she not have given to have-seen and bestowed on her
beloved father one last kiss! Oh! how she hoped that her inspired echo
of Uniform, on board the Jocasta, had drowned the memory, eclipsed the
meaning, of that fatal utterance of Shop!

CHAPTER V. THE FAMILY AND THE FUNERAL

It was the evening of the second day since the arrival of the black
letter in London from Lymport, and the wife of the brewer and the wife
of the Major sat dropping tears into one another's laps, in expectation
of their sister the Countess. Mr. Andrew Cogglesby had not yet returned
from his office. The gallant Major had gone forth to dine with General
Sir George Frebuter, the head of the Marines of his time. It would have
been difficult for the Major, he informed his wife, to send in an excuse
to the General for non-attendance, without entering into particulars;
and that he should tell the General he could not dine with him, because
of the sudden decease of a tailor, was, as he let his wife understand,
and requested her to perceive, quite out of the question. So he dressed
himself carefully, and though peremptory with his wife concerning his
linen, and requiring natural services from her in the button department,
and a casual expression of contentment as to his ultimate make-up, he
left her