“Did I order the feeding of the horse?” said Jack, rising and yawning. “No, I forgot him. Who can think of horses now?” “Poor brute!” muttered Evan, and went out to see to him. The ostler had required no instructions to give the horse a feed of corn. Evan mounted, and rode out of the yard to where Jack was standing, bare-headed, in his old posture against the pillar, of which the shade had rounded, and the evening sun shone full on him over a black cloud. He now looked calmly gay. “I’m laughing at the agricultural Broadmead!” he said: “‘None o’ yer pryin’s and peerin’s!’ He thought my powers of amusing prodigious. ‘Dang ’un, he do maak a chap laugh!’ Well, Harrington, that sort of homage isn’t much, I admit.” Raikes pursued: “There’s something in a pastoral life, after all.” “Pastoral!” muttered Evan. “I was speaking of you at Beckley, and hope when you’re there you won’t make me regret my introduction of you. Keep your mind on old Cudford’s mutton-bone.” “I perfectly understood you,” said Jack. “I’m Presumed to be in luck. Ingratitude is not my fault—I’m afraid ambition is!” “Console yourself with it or what you can get till we meet—here or in London. But the Dragon shall be the address for both of us,” Evan said, and nodded, trotting off. CHAPTER XVIII. IN WHICH EVAN CALLS HIMSELF GENTLEMAN The young cavalier perused that letter again in memory. Genuine, or a joke of the enemy, it spoke wakening facts to him. He leapt from the spell Rose had encircled him with. Strange that he should have rushed into his dream with eyes open! But he was fully awake now. He would speak his last farewell to her, and so end the earthly happiness he paid for in deep humiliation, and depart into that gray cold mist where his duty lay. It is thus that young men occasionally design to burst from the circle of the passions, and think that they have done it, when indeed they are but making the circle more swiftly. Here was Evan mouthing his farewell to Rose, using phrases so profoundly humble, that a listener would have taken them for bitter irony. He said adieu to her,—pronouncing it with a pathos to melt scornful princesses. He tried to be honest, and was as much so as his disease permitted.