 lady's daughter, and accepting the place
she offered him, he was guilty of a breach of confidence; or reflect, that her
entire absence of suspicion imposed upon him a corresponding honesty toward her.
He fell into a blindness. Without dreaming for a moment that she designed to
encourage his passion for Rose, he yet beheld himself in the light she had cast
on him; and, received as her daughter's friend, it seemed to him not so utterly
monstrous that he might be her daughter's lover. A haughty, a grand, or a too
familiar manner, would have kept his eyes clearer on his true condition. Lady
Jocelyn spoke to his secret nature, and eclipsed in his mind the outward aspects
with which it was warring. To her he was a gallant young man, a fit companion
for Rose, and when she and Sir Franks said, and showed him, that they were glad
to know him, his heart swam in a flood of happiness they little suspected.
    This was another of the many forms of intoxication to which circumstances
subjected the poor lover. In Fallowfield, among impertinent young men, Evan's
pride proclaimed him a tailor. At Beckley Court, acted on by one genuine soul,
he forgot it, and felt elate in his manhood. The shades of Tailordom dispersed
like fog before the full South-west breeze. When I say he forgot it, the fact
was present enough to him, but it became an outward fact: he had ceased to feel
it within him. It was not a portion of his being, hard as Mrs. Mel had struck to
fix it. Consequently, though he was in a far worse plight than when he parted
with Rose on board the Jocasta, he felt much less of an impostor now. This may
have been partly because he had endured his struggle with the Demogorgon the
Countess painted to him in such frightful colours, and found him human after
all; but it was mainly owing to the hearty welcome Lady Jocelyn had extended to
him as the friend of Rose.
    Loving Rose, he nevertheless allowed his love no tender liberties. The eyes
of a lover are not his own; but his hands and lips are, till such time as they
are claimed. The sun must smile on us with peculiar warmth to woo us forth
utterly - pluck our hearts out. Rose smiled on many. She smiled on Drummond
Forth, Ferdinand Laxley, William Harvey, and her brother Harry; and she had the
same eyes for all ages. Once, previous to the arrival of the latter three, there
was
