ever cruel is the sweet Saldar?'
Raikes winced at this name.
'A truce to banter, Franko!' he said sternly: but the subject was opened, and the wound.
'Love!' he pursued, mildly groaning. 'Suppose you adored a fascinating woman, and she knew—positively knew—your manly weakness, and you saw her smiling upon everybody, and she told you to be happy, and egad, when you came to reflect, you found that after three months' suit you were nothing better than her errand-boy? A thing to boast of, is it not, quotha?'
'Love's yellow-fever, jealousy, methinks,' Franko commenced in reply; but
Raikes spat at the emphasized word.
'Jealousy!—who's jealous of clergymen and that crew? Not I, by Pluto! I carried five messages to one fellow with a coat-tail straight to his heels, last week. She thought I should drive my curricle—I couldn't afford an omnibus! I had to run. When I returned to her I was dirty. She made remarks!'
'Thy sufferings are severe—but such is woman!' said Franko. 'Gad, it's a good idea, though.' He took out a note-book and pencilled down a point or two. Raikes watched the process sardonically.
'My tragedy is, then, thy farce!' he exclaimed. 'Well, be it so! I believe I shall come to song-writing again myself shortly-beneath the shield of Catnach I'll a nation's ballads frame. I've spent my income in four months, and now I 'm living on my curricle. I underlet it. It 's like trade—it 's as bad as poor old Harrington, by Jove! But that isn't the worst, Franko!' Jack dropped his voice: 'I believe I'm furiously loved by a poor country wench.'
'Morals!' was Franko's most encouraging reproof.
'Oh, I don't think I've even kissed her,' rejoined Raikes, who doubted because his imagination was vivid. 'It 's my intellect that dazzles her. I 've got letters—she calls me clever. By Jove! since I gave up driving I've had thoughts of rushing down to her and making her mine in spite of home, family, fortune, friends, name, position—everything! I have, indeed.'
Franko looked naturally astonished at this amount of self-sacrifice.
'The Countess?' he shrewdly suggested.
'I'd rather be my Polly's prince,
Than yon great lady's errand-boy!'
Raikes burst into song.
He stretched out his hand, as if to discard all the great ladies who were passing. By the strangest misfortune ever known, the direction taken by his fingers was toward a carriage wherein, beautifully smiling opposite an elaborately reverend gentleman of middle age, the Countess de Saldar was sitting. This great lady is not to be blamed for deeming that her errand-boy was pointing her out vulgarly on a public promenade. Ineffable disdain curled off her sweet olive visage. She turned her head.
'I 'll go down to that girl to-night,' said Raikes, with compressed passion. And then he hurried Franko along to the bridge, where, behold, the Countess alighted with the gentleman, and walked beside him into the gardens.
'Follow her,' said Raikes, in agitation. 'Do you see her? by yon long- tailed raven's side? Follow her, Franko! See if he kisses her hand- anything! and meet me here in half an hour. I'll have evidence!'
Franko did not altogether like the office, but Raikes' dinners, singular luck, and superiority in the encounter of puns, gave him the upper hand with his friend, and so Franko went.
Turning away from the last glimpse of his Countess, Raikes crossed the bridge, and had not strolled far beneath the bare branches of one of the long green walks, when he perceived a gentleman with two ladies leaning on him.
'Now, there,' moralized this youth; 'now, what do you say to that? Do you call that fair? He can't be happy, and it's not in nature for them to be satisfied. And yet, if I went up and attempted to please them all by taking one away, the probabilities are that he would knock me down. Such is life! We won't be made comfortable!'
Nevertheless, he passed them with indifference, for it was merely the principle he objected to; and, indeed, he was so wrapped in his own conceptions, that his name had to be called behind him twice before he recognized Evan Harrington, Mrs. Strike, and Miss Bonner. The arrangement he had previously thought good, was then spontaneously adopted. Mrs. Strike reposed her fair hand upon his arm, and Juliana, with a timid glance of pleasure, walked ahead in Evan's charge. Close neighbourhood between the couples was not kept. The genius of Mr. Raikes was wasted in manoeuvres to lead his beautiful companion into places where he could be seen with her, and envied. It was, perhaps, more flattering that she should betray a marked disposition to prefer solitude in his society. But this idea illumined him only near the moment of parting. Then he saw it; then he groaned in soul, and besought Evan to have one more promenade, saying, with characteristic cleverness in the masking of his real thoughts: 'It gives us an appetite, you know.'
In Evan's face and Juliana's there was not much sign that any protraction of their walk together would aid this beneficent process of nature. He took her hand gently, and when he quitted it, it dropped.
'The Rose, the Rose of Beckley Court!' Raikes sang aloud. 'Why, this is a day of meetings. Behold John Thomas in the rear-a tower of plush and powder! Shall I rush-shall I pluck her from the aged stem?'
On the gravel-walk above them Rose passed with her aristocratic grandmother, muffled in furs. She marched deliberately, looking coldly before her. Evan's face was white, and Juliana, whose eyes were fixed on him, shuddered.
'I'm chilled,' she murmured to Caroline. 'Let us go.' Caroline eyed Evan with a meaning sadness.
'We will hurry to our carriage,' she said.
They were seen to make a little circuit so as not to approach Rose; after whom, thoughtless of his cruelty, Evan bent his steps slowly, halting when she reached her carriage. He believed—rather, he knew that she had seen him. There was a consciousness in the composed outlines of her face as she passed: the indifference was too perfect. Let her hate him if she pleased. It recompensed him that the air she wore should make her appearance more womanly; and that black dress and crape-bonnet, in some way, touched him to mournful thoughts of her that helped a partial forgetfulness of wounded self.
Rose had driven off. He was looking at the same spot, where Caroline's hand waved from her carriage. Juliana was not seen. Caroline requested her to nod to him once, but she would not. She leaned back hiding her eyes, and moving a petulant shoulder at Caroline's hand.
'Has he offended you, my child?'
Juliana answered harshly:
'No-no.'
The wheels rolled on, and Caroline tried other subjects, knowing possibly that they would lead Juliana back to this of her own accord.
'You saw how she treated him?' the latter presently said, without moving her hand from before her eyes.
'Yes, dear. He forgives her, and will forget it.'
'Oh!' she clenched her long thin hand, ' I pray that I may not die before
I have made her repent it. She shall!'
Juliana looked glitteringly in Caroline's face, and then fell a-weeping, and suffered herself to be folded and caressed. The storm was long subsiding.
'Dearest! you are better now?' said Caroline.
She whispered: 'Yes.'
'My
