Meantime the Countess was participating in a witty conversation in the drawing-room with Sir John and the Duke, Miss Current, and others; and it was not till after she had displayed many graces, and, as one or two ladies presumed to consider, marked effrontery, that she rose and drew Caroline away with her. Returning to her dressing-room, she found that Evan had faithfully kept his engagement; he was on the exact spot where she had left him.
Caroline came to him swiftly, and put her hand to his forehead that she might the better peruse his features, saying, in her mellow caressing voice: “What is this, dear Van, that you will do? Why do you look so wretched?”
“Has not Louisa told you?”
“She has told me something, dear, but I don’t know what it is. That you are going to expose us? What further exposure do we need? I’m sure, Van, my pride—what I had—is gone. I have none left!”
Evan kissed her brows warmly. An explanation, full of the Countess’s passionate outcries of justification, necessity, and innocence in higher than fleshly eyes, was given, and then the three were silent.
“But, Van,” Caroline commenced, deprecatingly, “my darling! of what use—now! Whether right or wrong, why should you, why should you, when the thing is done, dear?—think!”
“And you, too, would let another suffer under an unjust accusation?” said Evan.
“But, dearest, it is surely your duty to think of your family first. Have we not been afflicted enough? Why should you lay us under this fresh burden?”
“Because it’s better to bear all now than a life of remorse,” answered Evan.
“But this Mr. Laxley—I cannot pity him; he has behaved so insolently to you throughout! Let him suffer.”