Here is an opportunity for the countess, which she uses to some purpose. Unfortunately, she is felled by a stroke of fate, and her origin is exposed at a dinner-table with the duke. The little shadow of tragedy peeps here in the married misery of Caroline, the most beautiful of the sisters, and beloved of the duke. The fortunes of hero and heroine are fluctuating, and on the whole better for Evan than might have been expected. He is known to be a tailor, and yet the half-engaged lover of a beautiful heiress, and the guest of her parents. It is true, the widow of the great Mel, bent upon honesty, imperils the situation, and Evan completes the work by taking upon himself one of the countess’s crimes, is rejected by Lady Jocelyn, and leaves Beckley Court under a cloud, only believed in by Juliana, Rose’s rival. The fifth act finds him in London studying tailordom, offered the protection of Caroline’s duke. Juliana, the heiress of Beckley, desperately and vainly in love with him, dies leaving him Beckley Court and all her possessions. Here is a comical reversal of things, and an opportunity for clearing away all doubts of him by one sweeping act of generosity. Rose is engaged to his rival, Laxley, and when her father hears that Evan renounces the estate, and exclaims, ‘He must have the soul of a gentleman! There’s nothing he can expect in return, you know,’ cuttingly retorts, ‘One would think, papa, you had always been dealing with tradesmen.’ The end may be anticipated: marriage for Rose and Evan, and the consolations of the Church of Rome for the dear countess. ‘Sandra Belloni’ and ‘Harry Richmond’ are two of Mr. Meredith’s pictorial and melodious novels. Pictures and song abound in them, and breathless vivifying races with passion. Writers are not uncommonly enamoured of their heroines, and while none of his can claim a lack of sympathy and admiration on Mr. Meredith’s part, there are three that stand out as rivals for the post of his heart’s beloved. In different ways, all leading to the one source, like the various roads to Rome, is he equally the recording lover of Emilia or Sandra, Clara Middleton and Diana. These are his trio of perfect and bewitching women--not perfect in the wooden or puppet sense, but perfect with the lovely perfection of nature steeped, in the case of two, in the unanalyzable social charm which he so well knows how to make us feel and thrill to. Clara is the exquisite maiden of upper England, who could never be imaged out of her social surroundings; Diana brings to breeding an exhilarating dash of rebellious Irish blood and a purity of body and mind no less superlative than her younger sister’s; and Emilia, unlike both, is all passion and flame mounting on the swell of song.