thirty, certainly; but she possesses millions! Estates all over the kingdom, and the sweetest creature. But, no. Evan would be out of the way there, certainly. But—our women are very nice: they have the dearest, sweetest ways: but I would rather Evan did not marry one of them. And then there ‘s the religion!’
This was a sore of the Countess’s own, and she dropped a tear in coming across it.
‘No, my dears, it shall be Rose Jocelyn!’ she concluded: ‘I will take Evan over with me, and see that he has opportunities. It shall be Rose, and then I can call her mine; for in verity I love the child.’
It is not my part to dispute the Countess’s love for Miss Jocelyn; and I have only to add that Evan, unaware of the soft training he was to undergo, and the brilliant chance in store for him, offered no impediment to the proposition that he should journey to Portugal with his sister (whose subtlest flattery was to tell him that she should not be ashamed to own him there); and ultimately, furnished with cash for the trip by the remonstrating brewer, went.
So these Parcae, daughters of the shears, arranged and settled the young man’s fate. His task was to learn the management of his mouth, how to dress his shoulders properly, and to direct his eyes—rare qualities in man or woman, I assure you; the management of the mouth being especially admirable, and correspondingly difficult. These achieved, he was to place his battery in position, and win the heart and hand of an heiress.
Our comedy opens with his return from Portugal, in company with Miss Rose, the heiress; the Honourable Melville Jocelyn, the diplomate; and the Count and Countess de Saldar, refugees out of that explosive little kingdom.
CHAPTER IV. ON BOARD THE JOCASTA
From the Tagus to the Thames the Government sloop-of-war, Jocasta, had made a prosperous voyage, bearing that precious freight, a removed diplomatist and his family; for whose uses let a sufficient vindication be found in the exercise he affords our crews in the science of seamanship. She entered our noble river somewhat early on a fine July morning. Early as it was, two young people, who had nothing to do with the trimming or guiding of the vessel, stood on deck, and watched the double-shore, beginning to embrace them more and more closely as they sailed onward. One, a young lady, very young in manner, wore a black felt hat with a floating scarlet feather, and was clad about the shoulders in a mantle of foreign style and pattern. The other you might have taken for a wandering Don, were such an object ever known; so simply he assumed the dusky sombrero and dangling cloak, of which one fold was flung across his breast and drooped behind him. The line of an adolescent dark moustache ran along his lip, and only at intervals could you see that his eyes were blue and of the land he was nearing. For the youth was meditative, and held his head much down. The young lady, on the contrary, permitted an open inspection of her countenance, and seemed, for the moment at least, to be neither caring nor thinking of what kind of judgement would be passed on her. Her pretty nose was up, sniffing the still salt breeze with vivacious delight.
‘Oh!’ she cried, clapping her hands, ‘there goes a dear old English gull! How I have wished to see him! I haven’t seen one for two years and seven months. When I ‘m at home, I ‘ll leave my window open all night, just to hear the rooks, when they wake in the morning. There goes another!’
She tossed up her nose again, exclaiming:
‘I ‘m sure I smell England nearer and nearer! I smell the fields, and the cows in them. I’d have given anything to be a dairy-maid for half an hour! I used to lie and pant in that stifling air among those stupid people, and wonder why anybody ever left England. Aren’t you glad to come back?’
This time the fair speaker lent her eyes to the question, and shut her lips; sweet, cold, chaste lips she had: a mouth that had not yet dreamed of kisses, and most honest eyes.
The young man felt that they were not to be satisfied by his own, and after seeking to fill them with a doleful look, which was immediately succeeded by one of superhuman indifference, he answered:
‘Yes! We shall soon have to part!’ and commenced tapping with his foot the cheerful martyr’s march.
Speech that has to be hauled from the depths usually betrays the effort. Listening an instant to catch the import of this cavernous gasp upon the brink of sound, the girl said:
‘Part? what do you mean?’
Apparently it required a yet vaster effort to pronounce an explanation. The doleful look, the superhuman indifference, were repeated in due order: sound, a little more distinct, uttered the words:
‘We cannot be as we have been, in England!’ and then the cheerful martyr took a few steps farther.
‘Why, you don’t mean to say you’re going to give me up, and not be friends with me, because we’ve come back to England?’ cried the girl in a rapid breath, eyeing him seriously.
Most conscientiously he did not mean it! but he replied with the quietest negative.
‘No?’ she mimicked him. ‘Why do you say “No” like that? Why are you so mysterious, Evan? Won’t you promise me to come and stop with us for weeks? Haven’t you said we would ride, and hunt, and fish together, and read books, and do all sorts of things?’
He replied with the quietest affirmative.
‘Yes? What does “Yes!” mean?’ She lifted her chest to shake out the dead-alive monosyllable, as he had done. ‘Why are you so singular this morning, Evan? Have I offended you? You are so touchy!’
The slur on his reputation for sensitiveness induced the young man to attempt being more explicit.
‘I mean,’ he said, hesitating; ‘why, we must part. We shall not see each other every day. Nothing more than that.’ And away went the cheerful martyr in sublimest mood.
‘Oh! and that makes you, sorry?’ A shade of archness was in her voice.
The girl waited as if to collect something in her mind, and was now a patronizing woman.
‘Why, you dear sentimental boy! You don’t suppose we could see each other every day for ever?’
It was perhaps the cruelest question that could have been addressed to the sentimental boy from her mouth. But he was a cheerful martyr!
‘You dear Don Doloroso!’ she resumed. ‘I declare if you are not just like those young Portugals this morning; and over there you were such a dear English fellow; and that’s why I liked you so much! Do change! Do, please, be lively, and yourself again. Or mind; I’ll call you Don Doloroso, and that shall be your name in England. See there!—that’s—that’s? what’s the name of that place? Hoy! Mr. Skerne!’ She hailed the boatswain, passing, ‘Do tell me the name of that place.’
Mr. Skerne righted about to satisfy her minutely, and then coming up to Evan, he touched his hat, and said:
‘I mayn’t have another opportunity—we shall be busy up there—of thankin’ you again, sir, for what you did for my poor drunken brother Bill, and you may take my word I won’t forget it, sir, if he does; and I suppose he’ll be drowning his memory just as he was near drowning himself.’
Evan muttered something, grimaced civilly, and turned away. The girl’s observant brows were moved to a faintly critical frown, and nodding intelligently to the boatswain’s remark, that the young gentleman did not seem quite himself, now that he was nearing home, she went up to Evan, and said:
‘I’m going to give you a lesson in manners, to be quits with you. Listen,
