inconstant, cold? she asked. Confirmatory answers
coming, flung her back under the shield of Ferdinand if for a moment her
soul stood up armed and defiant, it was Evan's hand she took.

To whom do I belong? was another terrible question. In her ideas, if
Evan was not chargeable with that baseness which had sundered them he
might claim her yet, if he would. If he did, what then? Must she go to
him?

Impossible: she was in chains. Besides, what a din of laughter there
would be to see her led away by him. Twisting her joined hands: weeping
for her cousin, as she thought, Rose passed hours of torment over
Juliana's legacy to her.

'Why did I doubt him?' she cried, jealous that any soul should have
known and trusted him better. Jealous and I am afraid that the kindling
of that one feature of love relighted the fire of her passion thus
fervidly. To be outstripped in generosity was hateful to her. Rose,
naturally, could not reflect that a young creature like herself,
fighting against the world, as we call it, has all her faculties at the
utmost stretch, and is often betrayed by failing nature when the will is
still valiant.

And here she sat-in chains! 'Yes! I am fit only to be the wife of
an idle brainless man, with money and a title,' she said, in extreme
self-contempt. She caught a glimpse of her whole life in the horrid
tomb of his embrace, and questions whether she could yield her hand to
him--whether it was right in the eyes of heaven, rushed impetuously
to console her, and defied anything in the shape of satisfactory
affirmations. Nevertheless, the end of the struggle was, that she felt
that she was bound to Ferdinand.

'But this I will do,' said Rose, standing with heat-bright eyes and
deep-coloured cheeks before the glass. 'I will clear his character at
Beckley. I will help him. I will be his friend. I will wipe out the
injustice I did him.' And this bride-elect of a lord absolutely added
that she was unworthy to be the wife of a tailor!

'He! how unequalled he is! There is nothing he fears except shame. Oh!
how sad it will be for him to find no woman in his class to understand
him and be his helpmate!'

Over, this sad subject, of which we must presume her to be accurately
cognizant, Rose brooded heavily. By mid-day she gave her Grandmother
notice that she was going home to Juliana's funeral.

'Well, Rose, if you think it necessary to join the ceremony,' said Lady
Elburne. 'Beckley is bad quarters for you, a