The Amazing Marriage......................................................................................................................................1

EVERYBODY has heard of the beautiful Countess of Cressett, who was one of the lights of this country at

the time when crowned heads were running over Europe, crying out for charity's sake to be amused after their

tiresome work of slaughter: and you know what a dread they have of moping. She was famous for her fun and

high spirits besides her good looks, which you may judge of for yourself on a walk down most of our great

noblemen's collections of pictures in England, where you will behold her as the goddess Diana fitting an

arrow to a bow; and elsewhere an Amazon holding a spear; or a lady with dogs, in the costume of the day;

and in one place she is a nymph, if not Diana herself, gazing at her naked feet before her attendants loosen

her tunic for her to take the bath, and her hounds are pricking their ears, and you see antlers of a stag behind a

block of stone. She was a wonderful swimmer, among other things, and one early morning, when she was a

girl, she did really swim, they say, across the Shannon and back to win a bet for her brother Lord Levellier,

the colonel of cavalry, who left an arm in Egypt, and changed his way of life to become a wizard, as the

common people about his neighbourhood supposed, because he foretold the weather and had cures for aches

and pains without a doctor's diploma. But we know now that he was only a mathematician and astronomer,

all for inventing military engines. The brother and sister were great friends in their youth, when he had his

right arm to defend her reputation with; and she would have done anything on earth to please him.

There is a picture of her in an immense flat white silk hat trimmed with pale blue, like a pavilion, the broadest

brim ever seen, and she simply sits on a chair; and Venus the Queen of Beauty would have been extinguished

under that hat, I am sure; and only to look at Countess Fanny's eye beneath the brim she has tipped ever so

slightly in her artfulness makes the absurd thing graceful and suitable. Oh! she was a cunning one. But you

must be on your guard against the scandalmongers and collectors of anecdotes, and worst of any, the critic

of our Galleries of Art; for she being in almost all of them (the principal painters of the day were on their

knees for the favour of a sitting), they have to speak of her pretty frequently, and they season their dish, the

"Here we come to another portrait of the beautiful but, we fear, naughty Countess of Cressett."

You are to imagine that they know everything, and they are so indulgent when they drop their blot on a lady's

They can boast of nothing more than having read Nymney's Letters and Correspondence, published,

fortunately for him, when he was no longer to be called to account below for his malicious insinuations,

pretending to decency in initials and dashes. That man was a hater of women and the clergy. He was one of

the horrid creatures who write with a wink at you, which sets the wicked part of us on fire: I have known it

myself, and I own it to my shame; and if I happened to be ignorant of the history of Countess Fanny, I could

not refute his wantonness. He has just the same benevolent leer for a bishop. Give me, if we are to make a

choice, the beggar's breech for decency, I say; I like it vastly in preference to a Nymney, who leads you up to

the curtain and agitates it, and bids you to retire on tiptoe. You cannot help being angry with the man for both

reasons. But he is the writer society delights in, to show what it is composed of. A man brazen enough to

declare that he could hold us in suspense about the adventures of a broomstick, with the aid of a yashmak and

an ankle, may know the world; you had better not know himthat is my remark; and do not trust him.

He tells the story of the Old Buccaneer in fear of the public, for it was general property, but of course he

finishes with a Nymney touch: "So the Old Buccaneer is the doubloon she takes in exchange for a handful of

silver pieces." There is no such handful to exchangenot of the kind he sickeningly nudges at you. I will

prove to you it was not Countess Fanny's naughtiness, though she was indeed very blamable. Women should

walk in armour as if they were born to it; for these cold sneerers will never waste their darts on cuirasses. An

independent brave young creature, exposing herself thoughtlessly in her reckless innocence, is the victim for

them. They will bring all society down on her with one of their explosive sly words appearing so careless, the

cowards. I say without hesitation, her conduct with regard to Kirby, the Old Buccaneer, as he was called,

however indefensible in itself, warrants her at heart an innocent young woman, much to be pitied. Only to

think of her, I could sometimes drop into a chair for a good cry. And of him too! and their daughter Carinthia

Those critics quoting Nymney should look at the portrait of her in the Long Saloon of Cressett Castle, where

she stands in blue and white, completely dressed, near a table supporting a couple of holster pistols, and then

let them ask themselves whether they would speak of her so if her little hand could move.

Well, and so the tale of her swim across the Shannon river and back drove the young Earl of Cressett straight

over to Ireland to propose for her, he saying, that she was the girl to suit his book; not allowing her time to

think of how much he might be the man to suit hers. The marriage was what is called a good one: both full of

No wonder the whole town was very soon agog about the couple, until at the end of a year people began to

talk of them separately, she going her way, and he his. She could not always be on the top of a coach, which

Plenty of stories are current still of his fame as a fourin hand coachman. They say he once drove an

Emperor and a King, a Prince Chancellor and a pair of Field Marshals, and some ladies of the day, from the

metropolis to Richmond Hill in fifty or sixty odd minutes, having the ground cleared all the way by bell and

summons, and only a donkeycart and man, and a deaf old woman, to pay for; and went, as you can imagine,

at such a tearing gallop, that those Grand Highnesses had to hold on for their lives and lost their hats along

the road; and a publican at Kew exhibits one above his bar to the present hour. And Countess Fanny was up

among them, they say. She was equal to it. And some say, that was the occasion of her meeting the Old

She met him at Richmond in Surrey we know for certain. It was on Richmond Hill, where the old King met

his Lass. They say Countess Fanny was parading the hill to behold the splendid view, always admired so

much by foreigners, with their Achs and Hechs! and surrounded by her crowned courtiers in frogged

uniforms and moustachioed like seahorses, a little before dinner time, when Kirby passed her, and the

Emperor made a remark on him, for Kirby was a magnificent figure of a man, and used to be compared to a

threedecker entering harbour after a victory. He stood six feet four, and was broadshouldered and

deepchested to match, and walked like a king who has humbled his enemy. You have seen big dogs. And so

Countess Fanny looked round. Kirby was doing the same. But he had turned right about, and appeared

transfixed and like a royal beast angry with his wound. If ever there was love at first sight, and a dreadful

love, like a runaway mailcoach in a storm of wind and lightning at black midnight by the banks of a flooded

river, which was formerly our comparison for terrible situations, it was when those two met.

And, what! you exclaim, Buccaneer Kirby full sixtyfive, and Countess Fanny no more than three and

twenty, a young beauty of the world of fashion, courted by the highest, and she in love with him! Go and

gaze at one of our big ships coming out of an engagement home with all her flags flying and her crew

manning the yards. That will give you an idea of a young woman's feelings for an old warrior never beaten

down an inch by anything he had to endure; matching him, I dare say, in her woman's heart, with the Mighty

Highnesses who had only smelt the outside edge of battle. She did rarely admire a valiant man. Old as

Methuselah, he would have made her kneel to him. She was all heart for a real hero.

The story goes, that Countess Fanny sent her husband to Captain Kirby, at the emperor's request, to inquire

his name; and on hearing it, she struck her hands on her bosom, telling his Majesty he saw there the bravest

man in the king's dominions; which the emperor scarce crediting, and observing that the man must be, then, a

superhuman being to be so distinguished in a nation of the brave, Countess Fanny related the wellknown

tale of Captain Kirby and the shipful of mutineers; and how when not a man of them stood by him, and he in

the service of the first insurgent State of Spanish America, to save his ship from being taken over to the

enemy, he blew her up, fifteen miles from land: and so he got to shore swimming and floating alternately, and

was called Old SkyHigh by English sailors, any number of whom could always be had to sail under

Buccaneer Kirby. He fought on shore as well; and once he came down from the tops of the Andes with a

But his heart was on salt water; he was never so much at home as in a ship foundering or splitting into the

clouds. We are told that he never forgave the Admiralty for striking him off the list of English naval captains:

Ours, I am sure, was the loss; and many have thought so since. He was a mechanician, a master of stratagems,

and would say, that brains will beat Grim Death if we have enough of them. He was a standing example of

the lessons of his own MAXIMS FOR MEN, a very curious book, that fetches a rare price now wherever a

copy is put up for auction. I shudder at them as if they were muzzles of firearms pointed at me; but they were

not addressed to my sex; and still they give me an interest in the writer who would declare, that "he had never

failed in an undertaking without stripping bare to expose to himself where he had been wanting in Intention

So the emperor being immensely taken with Kirby's method of preserving discipline on board ship, because

(as we say to the madman, Your straitwaistcoat is my easychair) monarchs have a great love of discipline,

he begged Countess Fanny's permission that he might invite Captain Kirby to his table; and Countess Fanny

Makes prize of Countess Fanny:" for the popular imagination was extraordinarily roused by the elopement,

and there were songs and ballads out of number), Countess Fanny despatched her husband to Captain Kirby

again, meaning no harm, though the poor man is laughed at in the songs for going twice upon his mission.

None of the mighty people repented of having the Old Buccaneerfor that night, at all events. He sat in the

midst of them, you may believe, like the lord of that table, with his great white beard and hairnot a lock of

it shedand his bronze lionface, and a resolute but a merry eye that he had. He was no deep drinker of

wine, but when he did drink, and the wine champagne, he drank to show his disdain of its powers; and the

emperor wishing for a narrative of some of his exploits, particularly the blowing up of his ship, Kirby paid

his Majesty the compliment of giving it him as baldly as an official report to the Admiralty. So disengaged

and calm was he, with his bottles of champagne in him, where another would have been sparkling and laying

on the colours, that he was then and there offered Admiral's rank in the Imperial navy; and the Old

Buccaneer, like a courtier of our best days, bows to Countess Fanny, and asks her, if he is a free man to go:

and, No, says she, we cannot spare you! And there was a pretty wrangle between Countess Fanny and the

He was rarely out of her sight after their first meeting, and the ridiculous excuse he gave to her husband's

family was, she feared he would be kidnapped and made a Cossack of! And young Lord Cressett, her

husband, began to grumble concerning her intimacy with a man old enough to be her grandfather. As if the

age were the injury! He seemed to think it so, and vowed he would shoot the old depredator dead, if he found

him on the grounds of Cressett: "like vermin," he said, and it was considered that he had the right, and no jury

He had his opportunity one moonlight night, not far from the castle, and peppered Kirby with shot from a

But Kirby had a maxim, Steady shakes them, and he acted on it to receive his enemy's fire; and the young

lord's hand shook, and the Old Buccaneer stood out of the smoke not much injured, except in the coatcollar,

"Many would take that for a declaration of war, but I know it's only your lordship's diplomacy"; and then he

let loose to his mad fun, astounding Lord Cressett and his gamekeeper, and vowed, as the young lord tried to

relate subsequently, as well as he could recollect the wordshere I have it in print:"that he was a man

pickled in saltpetre when an infant, like Achilles, and proof against powder and shot not marked with cross

and key, and fetched up from the square magazine in the central d�p�t of the infernal factory, third turning to

the right of the grand arcade in Kingdomcome, where the nightporter has to wear wet petticoats, like a

Highland chief, to make short work of the sparks flying about, otherwise this world and many another would

Kirby had the wildest way of talking when he was not issuing orders under fire, best understood by sailors. I

So Lord Cressett said: "Diplomacy and infernal factories be hanged! Have your shot at me; it's only fair."

And Kirby discharged his pistol at the top twigs of an old oak tree, and called the young lord a Briton, and

proposed to take him in hand and make a man of him, as nigh worthy of his wife as any one not an Alexander

So they became friendly, and the young lord confessed it was his family that had urged him to the attack; and

Kirby abode at the castle, and all three were happy, in perfect honour, I am convinced: but such was not the

opinion of the Cressetts and Levelliers. Down they trooped to Cressett Castle with a rush and a roar, crying

on the disgrace of an old desperado like Kirby living there; Dukes, Marchionesses, Cabinet Ministers, leaders

of fashion, and fireeating colonels of the King's bodyguard, one of whom Captain John Peter Kirby laid on

his heels at ten paces on an April morning, when the duel was fought, as early as the blessed heavens had

There was talk of shutting up the infatuated lady. If not incarcerated, she was rigidly watched. The earl her

husband fell altogether to drinking and coaching, and other things. The ballad makes her say:

For news of his Countess Fanny." In spite of her bravery, that poor woman suffered.

We used to learn by heart the ballads and songs upon famous events in those old days when poetry was

But Captain Kirby gave provocation enough to both families when he went among the taverns and clubs and

vowed before Providence over his big fist that they should rue their interference, and he would carry off the

lady on a day he named; he named the hour as well, they say, and that was midnight of the month of June.

The Levelliers and Cressetts foamed at the mouth in speaking of him, so enraged they were on account of his

age and his passion for a young woman. As to blood, the Kirbys of Lincolnshire were quite equal to the

Cressetts of Warwick. The Old Buccaneer seems to have had money too. But you can see what her people

had to complain of: his insolent contempt of them was unexampled. And their tyranny had roused my lady's

high spirit not a bit less, and she said right out: "When he comes, I am ready and will go with him."

There was boldness for you on both sides! All the town was laughing and betting on the event of the night in

June: and the odds were in favour of Kirby, for though Lord Cressett was quite the popular young English

nobleman, being a capital whip and free of his coin, in those days men who had smelt powder were often

prized above titles, and the feeling, out of society, was very strong for Kirby, even previous to the fight on the

heath. And the age of the indomitable adventurer must have contributed to his popularity. He was the hero of

I have always maintained that it was an understatement. We must remember, it was not Kirby speaking, but

the songwriter. Kirby would not, in my opinion, have numbered years he was proud of below their due

quantity. He was more, if he died at ninetyone; and Chillon Switzer John Kirby, born eleven months after

the elopement, was, we know, twentythree years old when the old man gave up the ghost and bequeathed

him little besides a lawsuit with the Austrian Government, and the care of Carinthia Jane, the second child

of this extraordinary union: both children born in wedlock, as you will hear. Sixtythree, or sixtyseven, near

upon seventy, when most men are reaping and stacking their sins with groans and weak knees, Kirby was a

Captain John Peter Avason Kirby, son of a Lincolnshire squire of an ancient stock, was proud of his blood

As brave a Pedigree,' cries Kirby." That was the songwriter's answer to the charge that the countess had

John Peter was fourth of a family of seven children, all males, and hard at the bottle early in life: "for want of

proper occupation," he says in his Memoirs, and applauds his brother Stanson, the clergyman, for being ahead

of him in renouncing strong drinks, because he found that he "cursed better upon water." Water, however,

helped Stanson Kirby to outlive his brothers and inherit the Lincolnshire property, and at the period of the

great scandal in London he was palsied and waited on by his grandson and heir Ralph Thorkill Kirby, the

hero of an adventure celebrated in our Law courts and on the English stage; for he took possession of his

coachman's wife, and was accused of compassing the death of the husband. He was not hanged for it, so we

The stagepiece is called Saturday Night, and it had an astonishing run, but is only remembered now for the

song of "Saturday," sung by the poor coachman and labourers at the village alehouse before he starts to

capture his wife from the clutches of her seducer and meets his fate. Never was there a more popular song;

That was the very song the unfortunate coachman of Kirby Hall joined in singing before he went out to face

"The ravished wife of my bosom," he calls her all through the latter half of the play. It is a real tragedy. The

songs of that day have lost their effect now, I suppose. They will ever remain pathetic to me; and to hear the

poor coachman William Martin invoking the name of his dear stolen wife Elizabeth, jug in hand, so tearfully,

while he joins the song of Saturday, was a most moving thing. You saw nothing but handkerchiefs out all

over the theatre. What it is that has gone from our drama, I cannot tell: I am never affected now as I was then;

and people in a low station of life could affect me then, without being flung at me, for I dislike an entire dish

of them, I own. We were simpler in our habits and ways of thinking. Elizabeth Martin, according to report,

was a woman to make better men than Ralph Thorkill act evillyas to good looks, I mean. She was not

entirely guiltless, I am afraid; though in the last scene, Mrs. Kempson, who played the part (as, alas, she

could do to the very life!), so threw herself into the pathos of it that there were few to hold out against her,

THE twentyfirst of June was the day appointed by Captain Kirby to carry off Countess Fanny, and the time

midnight: and ten minutes to the stroke of twelve, Countess Fanny, as if she scorned to conceal that she was

in a conspiracy with her grey haired lover, notwithstanding that she was watched and guarded, left the

Marchioness of Arpington's ballroom and was escorted downstairs by her brother Lord Levellier, sworn to

baffle Kirby. Present with him in the street and witness to the shutting of the carriagedoor on Countess

Fanny, were brother officers of his, General Abrane, Colonel Jack Potts, and Sir Upton Tomber.

The door fast shut, Countess Fanny kissed her hand to them and drew up the window, seeming merry, and as

they had expected indignation and perhaps resistance, for she could be a spitfire in a temper and had no fear

whatever of firearms, they were glad to have her safe on such good terms; and so General Abrane jumped up

on the box beside the coachman, Jack Potts jumped up between the footmen, and Sir Upton Tomber and the

one armed lord, as soon as the carriage was disengaged from the ruck two deep, walked on each side of it in

the road all the way to Lord Cressett's town house. No one thought of asking where that silly young man

Their numbers were swelled by quite a host going along, for heavy bets were on the affair, dozens having

backed Kirby; and it must have appeared serious to them, with the lady in custody, and constables on the

lookout, and Kirby and his men nowhere in sight. They expected an onslaught at some point of the

procession, and it may be believed they wished it, if only that they might see something for their money. A

beautiful bright moonlight night it happened to be. Arm in arm among them were Lord Pitscrew and Russett,

Earl of Fleetwood, a great friend of Kirby's; for it was a device of the Old Buccaneer's that helped the earl to

win the great Welsh heiress who made him, even before he took to hoarding and buying, one of the wealthiest

noblemen in England; but she was crazed by her marriage or the wild scenes leading to it; she never

presented herself in society. She would sit on the top of Estlemont towersas they formerly spelt itall day

and half the night in midwinter, often, looking for the mountains down in her native West country, covered

with an old white flannel cloak, and on her head a tall hat of her Welsh womenfolk; and she died of it,

leaving a son in her likeness, of whom you will hear. Lord Fleetwood had lost none of his faith in Kirby, and

He accepted fifty to one when the carriage came to a stop at the steps of Lord Cressett's mansion; but he was

anxious, and well he might be, seeing Countess Fanny alight and pass up between two lines of gentlemen all

bowing low before her: not a sign of the Old Buccaneer anywhere to right or left! Heads were on the look

She was at the door and about to enter the house. Then it was, that with a shout of the name of some dreadful

heathen god, Colonel Jack Potts roared out, "She's half a foot short o' the mark!"

He was on the pavement, and it seems he measured her as she slipped by him, and one thing and another

caused him to smell a cheat; and General Abrane, standing beside her near the door, cried: "Where art flying

now, Jack?" But Jack Potts grew more positive and bellowed, "Peel her wig! we're done!"

And she did not speak a word, but stood huddledup and hooded; and Lord Levellier caught her by the arm

as she was trying a dash into the hall, and Sir Upton Tomber plucked at her veil and raised it, and whistled:

"Phew!"which struck the rabble below with awe of the cunning of the Old Buccaneer; and there was no

need for them to hear General Abrane say: "Right! Jack, we've a dead one in hand," or Jack Potts reply: "It's

ten thousand pounds clean winged away from my pocket, like a string of wild geese!"

The excitement of the varletry in the square, they say, was fearful to hear. So the principal noblemen and

gentlemen concerned thought it prudent to hurry the young woman into the house and bar the door; and there

she was very soon stripped of veil and blonde false wig with long curls, the whole framing of her artificial

resemblance to Countess Fanny, and she proved to be a goodlooking foreign maid, a dark one, powdered,

trembling very much, but not so frightened upon hearing that her penalty for the share she had taken in the

horrid imposture practised upon them was to receive and return a salute from each of the gentlemen in

rotation; which the hussy did with proper submission; and Jack Potts remarked, that "it was an honest buss,

When you have been the victim of a deceit, the explanation of the simplicity of the trick turns all the wonder

upon yourself, you know, and the backers of the Old Buccaneer and the wagerers against him crowed and

groaned in chorus at the maid's narrative of how the moment Countess Fanny had thrown up the window of

her carriage, she sprang out to a carriage on the off side, containing Kirby, and how she, this little French

jade, sprang in to take her place. One snap of the fingers and the transformation was accomplished. So for

another kiss all round they let her go free, and she sat at the suppertable prepared for Countess Fanny and

the party by order of Lord Levellier, and amused the gentlemen with stories of the ladies she had served,

English and foreign. And that is how men are taught to think they know our sex and may despise it! I could

preach them a lesson. Those men might as well not believe in the steadfastness of the very stars because one

or two are reported lost out of the firmament, and now and then we behold a whole shower of fragments

descending. The truth is, they have taken a stain from the life they lead, and are troubled puddles, incapable

of clear reflection. To listen to the tattle of a chatting little slut, and condemn the whole sex upon her

testimony, is a nice idea of justice. Many of the gentlemen present became notorious as womanscorners,

whether owing to Countess Fanny or other things. Lord Levellier was, and Lord Fleetwood, the wicked man!

And certainly the hearing of naughty stories of us by the light of a grievous and vexatious instance of our

misconduct must produce an impression. Countess Fanny's desperate passion for a man of the age of Kirby

struck them as out of nature. They talked of it as if they could have pardoned her a younger lover.

All that Lord Cressett said, on the announcement of the flight of his wife, was: "Ah! Fan! she never would

He positively declined to pursue. Lord Levellier would not attempt to follow her up without him, as it would

have cost money, and he wanted all that he could spare for his telescopes and experiments. Who, then, was

the gentleman who stopped the chariot, with his three mounted attendants, on the road to the sea, on the heath

That has been the question for now longer than half a century, in fact approaching seventy mortal years. No

It occurred at six o'clock on the summer morning. Countess Fanny must have known him, and not once did

she open her mouth to breathe his name. Yet she had no objection to talk of the adventure, and how Simon

Fettle, Captain Kirby's old ship's steward in South America, seeing horsemen stationed on the ascent of the

high road bordering the Bowl, which is miles round and deep, made the postillion cease jogging, and sang out

to his master for orders, and Kirby sang back to him to look to his priming, and then the postillion was bidden

proceed, and he did not like it, but he had to deal with pistols behind, where men feel weak, and he went

bobbing on the saddle in dejection, as if upon his very heart he jogged; and soon the fray commenced. There

Simon Fettle was a plain kindly creature without a thought of malice, who kept his master's accounts. He

fired the first shot at the foremost man, as he related in after days, "to reduce the odds." Kirby said to

Countess Fanny, just to comfort her, never so much as imagining she would be afraid, "The worst will be a

bloody shirt for Simon to mangle," for they had been arranging to live cheaply in a cottage on the Continent,

and Simon Fettle to do the washing. She could not help laughing outright. But when the Old Buccaneer was

down striding in the battle, she took a pistol and descended likewise; and she used it, too, and loaded again.

She had not to use it a second time. Kirby pulled the gentleman off his horse, wounded in the thigh, and while

dragging him to Countess Fanny to crave her pardon, a shot intended for Kirby hit the poor gentleman in the

breast, and Kirby stretched him at his length, and Simon and he disarmed the servant who had fired. One was

insensible, one flying, and those two on the ground. All in broad daylight; but so lonely is that spot, nothing

might have been heard of it, if at the end of the week the postillion, who had been bribed and threatened with

terrible threats to keep his tongue from wagging, had not begun to talk. So the scene of the encounter was

examined, and on one spot, carefully earthed over, bloodmarks were discovered in the green sand. People in

the huts on the hill top, a quarter of a mile distant, spoke of having heard sounds of firing while they were at

breakfast, and a little boy named Tommy Wedger said he saw a dead body go by in an open coach that

morning, all bloody and mournful. He had to appear before the magistrates, crying terribly, but did not know

the nature of an oath, and was dismissed. Time came when the boy learned to swear, and he did, and that he

had seen a beautiful lady firing and killing men like pigeons and partridges; but that was after Charles Dump,

Those who credited Charles Dump's veracity speculated on dozens of great noblemen and gentlemen known

I do not say I know anything; I do but lay before you the evidence we have to fix suspicion upon a notorious

character, perfectly capable of trying to thwart a man like Kirby, and with good reason to try, if she had

About eleven miles distant, as the crow flies and a bold huntsman will ride in that heath country, from the

PunchBowl, right across the mounds and the broad water, lies the estate of the Fakenhams, who

intermarried with the Coplestones of the iron mines, and were the wealthiest of the old county families until

Curtis Fakenham entered upon his inheritance. Money with him was like the farmwife's dish of grain she

tosses in showers to her fowls. He was more than what you call a lady killer, he was a womaneater. His

pride was in it as well as his taste, and when men are like that, indeed they are devourers!

Curtis was the elder brother of Commodore Baldwin Fakenham, whose offspring, like his own, were so

strangely mixed up with Captain Kirby's children by Countess Fanny, as you will hear. And these two

brothers were sons of Geoffrey Fakenham, celebrated for his devotion to the French Countess Jules

d'Andreuze, or some such name, a courtly gentleman, who turned Papist on his deathbed in France, in

Brittany somewhere, not to be separated from her in the next world, as he solemnly left word; wickedly,

To show the oddness of things and how opposite to one another brothers may be, his elder, the uncle of Curtis

and Baldwin, was the renowned old Admiral Fakenham, better known along our seacoasts and ports among

sailors as "Old Showery," because of a remark he once made to his flagcaptain, when cannonballs were

coming thick on them in a hardfought action. "Hot work, sir," his captain said. "Showery," replied the

admiral, as his cockedhat was knocked off by the wind of a cannonball. He lost both legs before the war

was over, and said merrily, "Stumps for life!" while they were carrying him below to the cockpit. In my

girlhood the boys were always bringing home anecdotes of old Admiral Showery: not all of them true ones,

perhaps, but they fitted him. He was a rough seaman, fond, as they say, of his glass and his girl, and utterly

despising his brother Geoffrey for the airs he gave himself, and crawling on his knees to a female Parleyvoo;

and when Geoffrey died, the admiral drank to his rest in the grave: "There's to my brother Jeff," he said, and

flinging away the dregs of his glass: "There's to the Frog!" and flinging away the glass to shivers: "There's to

He salted his language in a manner I cannot repeat; no epithet ever stood by itself. When I was young the

boys relished these dreadful words because they seemed to smell of tar and battlesmoke, when every

English boy was for being a sailor and daring the Black Gentleman below. In all truth, the bad words came

from him; though an excellent scholar has assured me they should be taken for aspirates, and mean no harm;

and so it may be, but heartily do I rejoice that aspirates have been dropped by people of birth; for you might

We have greatly improved in that respect. They say the admiral's reputation as a British sailor of the old

school made him, or rather his name, a great favourite at Court; but to Court he could not be got to go, and if

the tale be true, their Majesties paid him a visit on board his ship, in harbour one day, and sailors tell you that

Old Showery gave his liege lord and lady a common dish of boiled beef with carrots and turnips, and a plain

dumpling, for their dinner, with ale and port wine, the merit of which he swore to; and he became so elate,

that after the cloth was removed, he danced them a hornpipe on his pair of wooden legs, whistling his tune,

and holding his full tumbler of hot grog in his hand all the while, without so much as the spilling of a

drop!so earnest was he in everything he did. They say his limit was two bottles of port wine at a sitting,

with his glass of hot grog to follow, and not a soul could induce him to go beyond that. In addition to being

Well, now, the Curtis Fakenham of Captain Kirby's day had a good deal of his uncle as well as his father in

him, the spirit of one and the outside of the other; and, favoured or not, he had been distinguished among

Countess Fanny's adorers: she certainly chose to be silent about the name of the assailant. And it has been

attested on oath that two days and a night subsequent to the date furnished by Charles Dump, Curtis

Fakenham was brought to his house, Hollis Grange, lame of a leg, with a shot in his breast, that he carried to

the family vault; and his head gamekeeper, John Wiltshire, a resolute fellow, was missing from that hour.

Some said they had a quarrel, and Curtis was wounded and John Wiltshire killed. Curtis was known to have

been extremely attached to the man. Yet when Wiltshire was inquired for, he let fall a word of "having more

of Wiltshire than was agreeable to Hampshire" his county. People asked what that meant. Yet, according

to the tale, it was the surviving servant, by whom he, or whoever it may have been, was accidentally shot.

We are in a perfect tangle. On the other hand, it was never denied that Curtis and John Wiltshire were in

London together at the time of Countess Fanny's flight: and Curtis Fakenham was one of the procession of

armed gentlemen conducting her in her carriage, as they supposed; and he was known to have started off, on

the discovery of the cheat, with horrible imprecations against Frenchwomen. It became known, too, that

horses of his were standing saddled in his innyard at midnight. And more, Charles Dump the postillion was

taken secretly to set eyes on him as they wheeled him in his gardenwalk, and he vowed it was the identical

gentleman. But this coming by and by to the ear of Curtis, he had Charles Dump fetched over to confront

him; and then the man made oath that he had never seen Mr. Curtis Fakenham anywhere but there, in his own

This postillion made a small fortune. He was everywhere in request. People were never tired of asking him

how he behaved while the fight was going on, and he always answered that he sat as close to his horse as he

could, and did not dream of dismounting; for, he said, "he was a figure on a horse, and naught when off it."

His repetition of the story, with some adornments, and that same remark, made him the popular man of the

county; people said he might enter Parliament, and I think at one time it was possible. But a great success is

full of temptations. After being hired at inns to fill them with his account of the battle, and tipped by

travellers from London to show the spot, he set up for himself as innkeeper, and would have flourished, only

he had contracted habits on his rounds, and he fell to contradicting himself, so that he came to be called

Lying Charley; and the people of the country said it was "he who drained the PunchBowl, for though he

Yet we have the doctor of the village of Ipley, Dr. Cawthorne, a noted botanist, assuring us of the absolute

credibility of Charles Dump, whom he attended in the poor creature's last illness, when Charles Dump

confessed he had lived in mortal terror of Squire Curtis, and had got the trick of lying, through fear of telling

So he died delirious and contrite. Cawthorne, the great Turf man, inherited a portrait of him from his father

the doctor. It was often the occasion of the story being told over again, and used to hang in the patient's

receptionroom, next to an oil painting of the PunchBowl, an admired landscape picture by a local artist,

highlytoned and true to every particular of the scene, with the bright yellow road winding uphill, and the

banks of brilliant purple heath, and a white thorn in bloom quite beautiful, and the green fir trees, and the big

Bowl black as a cauldron,indeed a perfect feast of harmonious contrasts in colours.

And now you know how it is that the names of Captain Kirby and Curtis Fakenham are alive to the present

We lived a happy domestic life in those old coaching days, when county affairs and county people were the

topics of firesides, and the country enclosed us to make us feel snug in our own importance. My opinion is,

that men and women grow to their dimensions only where such is the case. We had our alarms from the

outside now and again, but we soon relapsed to dwell upon our private business and our pleasant little hopes

and excitements; the courtships and the crosses and the scandals, the teaparties and the dances, and how the

morning looked after the stormy night had passed, and the coach coming down the hill with a box of news

and perhaps a curious passenger to drop at the inn. I do believe we had a liking for the very highwaymen, if

they had any reputation for civility. What I call human events, things concerning you and me, instead of the

deafening catastrophes now afflicting and taking all conversation out of us, had their natural interest then. We

studied the face of each morning as it came, and speculated upon the secret of the thing it might have in store

for us or our heroes and heroines; we thought of them more than of ourselves. Long after the adventures of

the PunchBowl, our county was anxious about Countess Fanny and the Old Buccaneer, wondering where

they were and whether they were prospering, whether they were just as much in love as ever, and which of

them would bury the other, and what the foreign people abroad thought of that strange pair.

I HAVE still time before me, according to the terms of my agreement with the person to whom I have, I fear

foolishly, entrusted the letters and documents of a story surpassing ancient as well as modern in the

wonderment it causes, that would make the Law courts bless their hearts, judges no less than the barristers, to

have it running through them day by day, with every particular to wrangle over, and many to serve as a text

It should be mentioned that the postillion Charles Dump is not represented, and I have no conception of the

reason why not, sitting on horseback, in the portrait in the possession of the Cawthorne family. I have not

seen it, I am bound to admit. We had offended Dr. Cawthorne, by once in an urgent case calling in another

doctor, who, he would have it, was a quack, that ought to have killed us, and we ceased to visit; but a

gentleman who was an established patient of Dr. Cawthorne's and had frequent opportunities of judging the

portrait, in the course of a chronic malady, describes Charles Dump on his legs as a small man looking

diminished from a very much longer one by shrinkage in thickish wrinkles from the shoulders to the shanks.

His hat is enormous and very gay. He is rather of sad countenance. An elevation of his collar behind the ears,

and pointed at the neck, gives you notions of his having dropped from some hook. He stands with his

forefinger extended, like a disused semaphorepost, that seems tumbling and desponding on the hill by the

highroad, in his attitude while telling the tale; if standing it may be called, where the whole figure appears

imploring for a seat. That was his natural position, as one would suppose any artist must have thought, and a

horse beneath him. But it has been suggested that the artist in question was no painter of animals. Then why

did he not get a painter of animals to put in the horse? It is vain to ask, though it is notorious that artists

combine without bickering to do these things; and one puts his name on the animal, the other on the human

My informant adds, that the prominent feature, telling a melancholy tale of its own, is of sanguine colour, and

while plainly in the act of speaking, Charles Dump might be fancied about to drop off to sleep. He was

impressed by the dreaminess of the face; and I must say I regard him as an interesting character. During my

girlhood Napoleon Bonaparte alone would have been his rival for filling an inn along our roads. I have

known our boys go to bed obediently and get up at night to run three miles to THE WHEATSHEAF, only to

stand on the bench or traveller'srest outside the window and look in at Charles Dump reciting, with just

He left a child, Mary Dump, who grew up to become lady's maid to Livia Fakenham, daughter of Curtis, the

beauty of Hampshire, equalled by no one save her cousin Henrietta Fakenham, the daughter of Commodore

Baldwin; and they were two different kinds of beauties, not to be compared, and different were their fortunes;

for this lady was likened to the sun going down on a cloudy noon, and that lady to the moon riding through a

stormy night. Livia was the young widow of Lord Duffield when she accepted the Earl of Fleetwood, and

was his third countess, and again a widow at eightandtwenty, and stepmother to young Cr*sus, the Earl of

Fleetwood of my story. Mary Dump testifies to her kindness of heart to her dependents. If we are to speak of

I resent being warned that my time is short and that I have wasted much of it over "the attractive Charles."

What I have done I have done with a purpose, and it must be a storyteller devoid of the rudiments of his art

who can complain of my dwelling on Charles Dump, for the world to have a pause and pin its faith to him,

which it would not do to a grander person that is, as a peg. Wonderful events, however true they are, must

be attached to something common and familiar, to make them credible. Charles Dump, I say, is like a

frontpage picture to a history of those old quiet yet exciting days in England, and when once you have

seized him the whole period is alive to you, as it was to me in the delicious dulness I loved, that made us

thirsty to hear of adventures and able to enjoy to the utmost every thing occurring. The man is no more

attractive to me than a lump of clay. How could he be? But supposing I took up the lump and told you that

there where I found it, that lump of clay had been rolled over and flung off by the left wheel of the prophet's

Chariot of Fire before it mounted aloft and disappeared in the heavens above!you would examine it and

cherish it and have the scene present with you, you may be sure: and magnificent descriptions would not be

onehalf so persuasive. And that is what we call, in my profession, Art, if you please.

So to continue: the Earl of Cressett fell from his coachbox in a fit, and died of it, a fortnight after the flight

of his wife; and the people said she might as well have waited. Kirby and Countess Fanny were at Lucerne or

Lausanne, or some such place, in Switzerland when the news reached them, and Kirby, without losing an

hour, laid hold of an English clergyman of the Established Church and put him through the ceremony of

celebrating his lawful union with the beautiful young creature he adored. And this he did, he said, for the

world to guard his Fan in a wider circle than his two arms could compass, if not quite so well.

So the Old Buccaneer was ever after that her lawful husband, and as his wedded wife, not wedded to a fool,

she was an example to her sex, like many another woman who has begun badly with a lightheaded mate. It

is hard enough for a man to be married to a fool, but a man is only halfcancelled by that burden, it has been

said; whereas a woman finds herself on board a rudderless vessel, and often the desperate thing she does is to

avoid perishing! Ten months, or eleven, some say, following the proclamation of the marriagetie, a son was

born to Countess Fanny, close by the castle of Chillon on the lake, and he had the name of Chillon Switzer

John Kirby given to him to celebrate the fact. Two years later the girl was born, and for the reason of her first

seeing the light in that Austrian province, she was christened Carinthia Jane. She was her old father's pet; but

Countess Fanny gloried in the boy. She had fancied she would be a childless woman before he gave sign of

coming; and they say she wrote a little volume of Meditations in Prospect of Approaching Motherhood, for

I have never been able to procure the book or pamphlet, but I know she was the best of mothers, and of wives

too. And she, with her old husband, growing like a rose out of a weather beaten rock, proved she was that,

among those handsome foreign officers poorly remarkable for their morals. Not once had the Old Buccaneer

to teach them a lesson. Think of it and you will know that her feet did not straynor did her pretty eyes. Her

heart was too full for the cravings of vanity. Innocent ladies who get their husbands into scrapes are innocent,

perhaps; but knock you next door in their bosoms, where the soul resides, and ask for information of how

innocence and uncleanness may go together. Kirby purchased a mine in Carinthia, on the borders of Styria,

and worked it himself. His native land displeased him, so that he would not have been unwilling to see

Chillon enter the Austrian service, which the young man was inclined for, subsequent to his return to his

parents from one of the English public schools, notwithstanding his passionate love for Old England. But

Lord Levellier explained the mystery in a letter to his halfforgiven sister, praising the boy for his defence of

his mother's name at the school, where a big brutal fellow sneered at her, and Chillon challenged him to

sword or pistol; and then he walked down to the boy's home in Staffordshire to force him to fight; and the

father of the boy made him offer an apology. That was not much balm to Master Chillon's wound. He

returned to his mother quite heavy, unlike a young man; and the unhappy lady, though she knew him to be

bitterly sensitive on the point of honour, and especially as to everything relating to her, saw herself compelled

to tell him the history of her life, to save him, as she thought, from these chivalrous vindications of her good

name. She may have even painted herself worse than she was, both to excuse her brother's miserliness to her

son and the world's evil speaking of her. Wisely or not, she chose this course devotedly to protect him from

the perils she foresaw in connection with the name of the once famous Countess Fanny in the British Isles.

And thus are we stricken by the days of our youth. It is impossible to moralize conveniently when one is

So the young man heard his mother out and kissed her, and then he went secretly to Vienna and enlisted and

served for a year as a private in the regiment of Hussars called, my papers tell me, Liechtenstein, and what

with his good conduct and the help of Kirby's friends, he would have obtained a commission from the

emperor, when, at the right moment to keep a sprig of Kirby's growth for his country, Lord Levellier sent

word that he was down for a cornetcy in a British regiment of dragoons. Chillon came home from a garrison

town, and there was a consultation about his future career. Shall it be England? Shall it be Austria? Countess

Fanny's voice was for England, and she carried the vote, knowing though she did that it signified separation,

and it might be alienationwhere her son would chance to hear things he could not refute. She believed that

her son by such a man as Kirby would be of use to his country, and her voice, against herself, was for

It broke her heart. If she failed to receive the regular letter, she pined and was disconsolate. He has heard

more of me! was in her mind. Her husband sat looking at her with his old large grey glassy eyes. You would

have fancied him awaiting her death as the signal for his own release. But she, poor mother, behind her

weeping lids beheld her son's filial love of her wounded and bleeding. When there was anything to be done

for her, old Kirby was astir. When it was nothing, either in physic or assistance, he was like a great corner of

rock. You may indeed imagine grief in the very rock that sees its flower fading to the withered shred. On the

last night of her life this old man of past ninety carried her in his arms up a flight of stairs to her bed.

A week after her burial, Kirby was found a corpse in the mountain forest. His having called the death of his

darling his lightningstroke must have been the origin of the report that he died of lightning. He touched not

a morsel of food from the hour of the dropping of the sod on her coffin of ebony wood. An old crust of their

mahogany bread, supposed at first to be a specimen of quartz, was found in one of his coat pockets. He kissed

his girl Carinthia before going out on his last journey from home, and spoke some wandering words. The

mine had not been worked for a year. She thought she would find him at the mouth of the shaft, where he

would sometimes be sitting and staring, already dead at heart with the death he saw coming to the beloved

woman. They had to let her down with ropes, that she might satisfy herself he was not below. She and her

great dog and a faithful manservant discovered the body in the forest. Chillon arrived from England to see the

And now goodbye to sorrow for a while. Keep your tears for the living. And first I am going to describe to

you the young Earl of Fleetwood, son of the strange Welsh lady, the richest nobleman of his time, and how he

pursued and shunned the lady who had fascinated him, Henrietta, the daughter of Commodore Baldwin

Fakenham; and how he met Carinthia Jane; and concerning that lovely Henrietta and Chillon

KirbyLevellier; and of the young poet of ordinary parentage, and the giant Captain Abrane, and Livia the

widowed Countess of Fleetwood, Henrietta's cousin, daughter of Curtis Fakenham; and numbers of others;

Lord Levellier, Lord Brailstone, Lord Simon Pitscrew, Chumley Potts, young Ambrose Mallard; and the

English pugilist, such a man of honour though he drank; and the adventures of Madge, Carinthia Jane's maid.

Just a few touches. And then the marriage dividing Great Britain into halves, taking sides. After that, I trust

you may go on, as I would carry you were we all twenty years younger, had I but sooner been in possession

of these treasured papers. I promise you excitement enough, if justice is done to them. But I must and will

describe the wedding. This young Earl of Fleetwood, you should know, was a very powdermagazine of

ambition, and never would he break his word: which is right, if we are properly careful; and so he

She ceases. According to the terms of the treaty, the venerable lady's time has passed. An extinguisher

descends on her, giving her the likeness of one under condemnation of the Most Holy Inquisition, in the ranks

of an auto da f�; and singularly resembling that victim at the first sharp bite of the flames she will be when

BROTHER and sister were about to leave the mountainland for England. They had not gone to bed

overnight, and from the windows of their deserted home, a little before dawn, they saw the dwindled moon,

a late riser, break through droves of hunted cloud, directly topping their ancient guardian height, the triple

peak and giant of the range, friendlier in his name than in aspect for the two young people clinging to the

scene they were to quit. His name recalled old days: the apparition of his head among the heavens drummed

To the girl, this was a division of her life, and the dawn held the sword. She felt herself midswing across a

gulf that was the grave of one half, without a light of promise for the other. Her passionate excess of

attachment to her buried home robbed the future of any colours it might have worn to bid a young heart

quicken. And England, though she was of British blood, was a foreign place to her, not alluring: her brother

had twice come out of England reserved in speech; her mother's talk of England had been unhappy; her father

had suffered illtreatment there from a brutal institution termed the Admiralty, and had never regretted the

not seeing England again. The thought that she was bound thitherward enfolded her like a frosty mist. Belt

these bare walls, these loud floors, chill rooms, dull windows, and the vaultsounding of the ghostly house,

everywhere the absence of the faces in the house, told her she had no choice, she must go. The appearance of

her old friend the towering mountainheight, up a blue nightsky, compelled her swift mind to see herself far

away, yearning to him out of exile, an exile that had no local features; she would not imagine them to give a

centre of warmth, her wilful grief preferred the blank. It resembled death in seeming some hollowness behind

The room was lighted by a stablelantern on a kitchentable. Their seat near the window was a rickety

gardenbench rejected in the headlong sale of the furniture; and when she rose, unable to continue motionless

while the hosts of illuminated cloud flew fast, she had to warn her brother to preserve his balance. He tacitly

She walked up and down the long sevenwindowed saloon, haunted by her footfall, trying to think, chafing at

his quietness and acknowledging that he did well to be quiet. They had finished their packing of boxes and of

wearingapparel for the journey. There was clothing to think of, nothing further to talk of, nothing for her to

do save to sit and look, and deaden her throbs by counting them. She soon returned to her seat beside her

brother, with the marvel in her breast that the house she desired so much to love should be cold and repel her

now it was a vacant shell. Her memories could not hang within it anywhere. She shut her eyes to be with the

images of the dead, conceiving the method as her brother's happy secret, and imitated his posture, elbows

propped on knees to support the chin. His quietness breathed of a deeper love than her own.

Meanwhile the high wind had sunk; the moon, after pushing her withered half to the zenith, was climbing the

dusky edge, revealed fitfully; threads and wisps of thin vapour travelled along a falling gale, and branched

from the dome of the sky in migratory broken lines, like wild birds shifting the order of flight, north and east,

where the dawn sat in a web, but as yet had done no more than shoot up a glow along the central heavens, in

amid the waves of deepened cloud: a mirror for night to see her dark self in her own hue. A shiver between

the silent couple pricked their wits, and she said: "Chillon, shall we run out and call the morning?"

It was an old game of theirs, encouraged by their hearty father, to be out in the early hour on a rise of ground

near the house and "call the morning." Her brother was glad of the challenge, and upon one of the yawns

following a sleepless night, replied with a return to boyishness: "Yes, if you like. It's the last time we shall do

They sprang up together and the bench fell behind them. Swinging the lantern he carried inconsiderately, the

ring of it was left on his finger, and the end of candle rolled out of the crazy frame to the floor and was

"What do you think of the window?we've done it before, Carin. Better than groping down stairs and

"I'm ready," she said, and caught at her skirts by instinct to prove her readiness on the spot.

A drop of a dozen feet or so from the French window to a flowerbed was not very difficult. Her father had

taught her how to jump, besides the how of many other practical things. She leaped as lightly as her brother,

never touching earth with her hands; and rising from the proper contraction of the legs in taking the descent,

"For no enemy's shot is equal to a weak heart in the act," Chillon pursued the quotation, laying his hand on

They passed down the garden and a sloping meadow to a brook swollen by heavy rains; over the brook on a

narrow plank, and up a steep and stony pathway, almost a watercourse, between rocks, to another meadow,

level with the house, that led ascending through a firwood; and there the change to thicker darkness told them

light was abroad, though whether of the clouded moon or of the first grey of the quiet revolution was

Beyond the firwood light was visibly the dawn's. Halfway down the ravines it resembled the light cast off a

torrent water. It lay on the grass like a sheet of unreflecting steel, and was a face without a smile above. Their

childhood ran along the tracks to the forest by the light, which was neither dim nor cold, hut grave; presenting

tree and shrub and dwarf growth and grass austerely, not deepening or confusing them. They wound their

way by borders of crag, seeing in a dell below the mouth of the idle mine begirt with weedy and shrubhung

rock, a dripping semicircle. Farther up they came on the flat juniper and crossed a wet groundthicket of

whortleberry: their feet were in the moist moss among sprigs of heath; and a great fir tree stretched his length,

a peeled multitude of his dead fellows leaned and stood upright in the midst of scattered fire stained

members, and through their skeleton limbs the sheer precipice of slaterock of the bulk across the chasm,

nursery of hawk and eagle, wore a thin blue tinge, the sign of warmer light abroad.

"This way, my brother!" cried Carinthia, shuddering at a path he was about to follow.

Dawn in the mountainland is a meeting of many friends. The pinnacle, the foresthead, the latschentufted

mound, rock bastion and defiant cliff and giant of the triple peak, were in view, clearly lined for a common

recognition, but all were figures of solid gloom, unfeatured and bloomless. Another minute and they had

flung off their mail and changed to various, indented, intricate, succinct in ridge, scar and channel; and they

had all a look of watchfulness that made them one company. The smell of rockwaters and roots of herb and

moss grew keen; air became a wine that raised the breast high to breathe it; an uplifting coolness pervaded the

heights. What wonder that the mountainbred girl should let fly her voice. The natural carol woke an echo.

"And we still not forget our home, Chillon," she said, touching him gently to comfort some saddened feeling.

The plumes of cloud now slowly entered into the lofty arch of dawn and melted from brown to purpleblack.

The upper sky swam with violet; and in a moment each stray cloudfeather was edged with rose, and then

suffused. It seemed that the heights fronted East to eye the interflooding of colours, and it was imaginable

that all turned to the giant whose forehead first kindled to the sun: a greeting of god and king.

On the morning of a farewell we fluctuate sharply between the very distant and the close and homely: and

even in memory the fluctuation occurs, the grander scene casting us back on the modestly nestling, and that,

when it has refreshed us, conjuring imagination to embrace the splendour and wonder. But the wrench of an

immediate division from what we love makes the things within reach the dearest, we put out our hands for

them, as violentlyparted lovers do, though the soul in days to come would know a craving, and imagination

"Shall we go down?" said Carinthia, for she knew a little cascade near the house, showering on rock and fern,

They descended, Chillon saying that they would soon have the mists rising, and must not delay to start on

The armies of the young sunrise in mountainlands neighbouring the plains, vast shadows, were marching

over woods and meads, black against the edge of golden; and great heights were cut with them, and bounding

waters took the leap in a silvery radiance to gloom; the bright and darkbanded valleys were like night and

morning taking hands down the sweep of their rivers. Immense was the range of vision scudding the peaks

and over the illimitable Eastward plains flat to the very East and sources of the sun.

Her brother glanced at her. He was fond of her, and personally he liked her face; but such a confident

anticipation of marriage on the part of a portionless girl set him thinking of the character of her charms and

the attraction they would present to the world of men. They were expressive enough; at times he had thought

them marvellous in their clear cut of the animating mind. No one could fancy her handsome; and just now her

hair was in some disorder, a night without sleep had an effect on her complexion.

Her ideas were anywhere but with the dream of a husband. "Could we stay on another day?"

"My dear girl! Another night on that crazy stool! Besides, Mariandl is bound to go today to her new place,

"No, you couldn't; not for a starving regiment! Your accomplishments are of a different sort. No, it's better to

"That I think too," said she, "and we should have to buy provisions. Then, brother, instantly after breakfast.

Only, let us walk it. I know the whole way, and it is not more than a two days' walk for you and me. Consent.

Driving would be like going gladly. I could never bear to remember that I was driven away. And walking will

"A few florins more or less!" he rejoined, rather frowning. "You have good Styrian boots, I see. But I want to

"But, brother, if they know we are coming they will wait for us. And we can be there tomorrow night or the

He considered it. He wanted exercise and loved this mountain land; his inclinations melted into hers, though

he had reasons for hesitating. "Well, we'll send on my portmanteau and your boxes in the cart; we'll walk it.

You're a capital walker, you're a gallant comrade; I wouldn't wish for a better." He wondered, as he spoke,

whether any truehearted gentleman besides himself would ever think the same of this lonely girl.

Her eyes looked a delighted "Noreally?" for the sweetest on earth to her was to be prized by her brother.

She hastened forward. "We will go down and have our last meal at home," she said in the dialect of the

country. "We have five eggs. No meat for you, dear, but enough bread and butter, some honey left, and plenty

of coffee. I should like to have left old Mariandl more, but we are unable to do very much for poor people

now. Milk, I cannot say. She is just the kind soul to be up and out to fetch us milk for an early first breakfast;

Chillon smiled. "You were right, Janey, about not going to bed last night; we might have missed the

"To fall down by the wayside tired outyes, brother, a dead sleep is good. Then you are in the hands of God.

"A lord of that Admiralty," she appealed to his closer recollection. "But I mean, brother, dreaming is what I

"Don't be detesting, my dear; reserve your strength," said he. "I suppose dreams are of some use, now and

"They promise falsely sometimes. That's no reason why we should reject the consolation when we can't get

Perhaps a halfminute after she had spoken, he said, pursuing a dialogue within himself aloud rather than

She fancied she might not have heard correctly; she feared to ask: and yet she perceived a novel softness in

him that would have answered. Pain of an unknown kind made her love of her brother conscious that if she

The house was in sight, a long white building with blinds down at some of the windows, and some wide

open, some showing unclean glass: the three aspects and signs of a house's emptiness when they are seen

Carinthia remarked on their having met nobody. It had a serious meaning for them. Formerly they were proud

of outstripping the busy population of the mine, coming down on them with wild wavings and shouts at

sunrise. They felt the death again, a whole field laid low by one stroke, and wintriness in the season of glad

The second green of the year shot lively sparkles off the meadows, from a fringe of coloured globelets to a

warm silver lake of dews. The firwood was already breathing rich and sweet in the sun. The halfmoon fell

rayless and paler than the fan of fleeces pushed up Westward, high overhead, themselves dispersing on the

blue in downy feathers, like the mottled grey of an eagle's breast: the smaller of them bluish, like traces of the

She looked above, then below on the slim and straightgrown flocks of naked purple crocuses in bud and

blow abounding over the meadow that rolled to the level of the house, and two of these she gathered.

CHILLON was right in his forecast of the mists. An over moistened earth steaming to the sun obscured it

before the two had finished breakfast, which was a finish to everything eatable in the ravaged dwelling, with

the exception of a sly store for the midday meal, that old Mariandl had stuffed into Chillon's leather

sackthe fruit of secret begging on their behalf about the neighbourhood. He found the sack heavy and

bulky as he slung it over his shoulders; but she bade him make nothing of such a trifle till he had it inside

him. "And you that love tea so, my pretty one, so that you always laughed and sang after drinking a cup with

your mother," she said to Carinthia, "you will find one pinch of it in your bag at the end of the left foot

She crossed the strap of the bag on her mistress's bosom, and was embraced by Carinthia and Chillon in

turns, Carinthia telling her to dry her eyes, for that she would certainly come back and perhaps occupy the

house one day or other. The old soul moaned of eyes that would not be awake to behold her; she begged a

visit at her grave, though it was to be in a Catholic burialplace and the priests had used her dear master and

mistress ill, not allowing them to lie in consecrated ground; affection made her a champion of religious

tolerance and a little afraid of retribution. Carinthia soothed her, kissed her, gave the promise, and the parting

She and Chillon had on the previous day accomplished a pilgrimage to the restingplace of their father and

mother among humble Protestants, ironsmelters, in a valley out of the way of their present line of march to

the glacier of the great snowmountain marking the junction of three Alpine provinces of Austria. Josef, the

cartdriver with the boxes, who was to pass the valley, vowed of his own accord to hang a fresh day's wreath

on the rails. He would not hear of money for the purchase, and they humoured him. The family had been

beloved. There was an offer of a home for Carinthia in the castle of Count Lebern, a friend of her parents,

much taken with her, and she would have accepted it had not Chillon overruled her choice, determined that,

as she was English, she must come to England and live under the guardianship of her uncle, Lord Levellier,

The girl's cheeks were drawn thin and her lips shut as they departed; she was tearless. A phantom ring of mist

accompanied her from her first footing outside the house. She did not look back. The house came swimming

and plunging after her, like a spectral ship on big seas, and her father and mother lived and died in her breast;

and now they were strong, consulting, chatting, laughing, caressing; now still and white, caught by a vapour

that dived away with them either to right or left, but always with the same suddenness, leaving her to

question herself whether she existed, for more of life seemed to be with their mystery than with her

speculations. The phantom ring of mist enclosing for miles the invariable lowsweeping dark sprucefir kept

her thoughts on them as close as the shroud. She walked fast, but scarcely felt that she was moving. Near

midday the haunted circle widened; rocks were loosely folded in it, and heads of trees, whose round

intervolving roots grasped the yellow roadside soil; the mists shook like a curtain, and partly opened and

displayed a tapestrylandscape, roughly worked, of woollen crag and castle and suggested glen, threaded

waters, very prominent foreground, Autumn flowers on banks; a predominant atmospheric greyness. The sun

threw a shaft, liquid instead of burning, as we see his beams beneath a wave; and then the mists narrowed

again, boiled up the valleys and streams above the mountain, curled and flew, and were Python coils pierced

To look at it was to fancy they had been walking under water and had now risen to the surface. Carinthia's

mind stepped out of the chamber of death. The different air and scene breathed into her a timid warmth

toward the future, and between her naming of the lesser mountains on their side of the pass, she asked

questions relating to England, and especially the ladies she was to see at the Baths beyond the glacierpass.

She had heard of a party of his friends awaiting him there, without much encouragement from him to ask

particulars of them, and she had hitherto abstained, as she was rather shy of meeting her countrywomen. The

ladies, Chillon said, were cousins; one was a young widow, the Countess of Fleetwood, and the other was

Carinthia murmured in German: "Poor soul!" Which one was she pitying? The widow, she said, in the tone

Her brother assured her the widow was used to it, for this was her second widowhood.

Her brother laughed to himself at her expressive present tense. "And marries again!" he said. "There will

She dropped from her contemplation of the lady, and her look at her brother signified: It will not be you!

Chillon was engaged in spying for a place where he could spread out the contents of his bag. Sharp hunger

beset them both at the mention of eating. A bank of sloping green shaded by a chestnut proposed the seat, and

here he relieved the bag of a bottle of wine, slices of meat, bread, hard eggs, and lettuce, a chipped cup to

fling away after drinking the wine, and a supply of small buttercakes known to be favourites with Carinthia.

She reversed the order of the feast by commencing upon one of the cakes, to do honour to Mariandl's

"But we would have made it enough for our dear old dog Pluto as well, if he had lived," said Carinthia,

sighing with her thankfulness and compassionate regrets, a mixture often inspiring a tender babbling

melancholy. "Dogs' eyes have such a sick look of love. He might have lived longer, though he was very old,

only he could not survive the loss of father. I know the finding of the body broke his heart. He sprang

forward, he stopped and threw up his head. It was human language to hear him, Chillon. He lay in the yard,

trying to lift his eyes when I came to him, they were so heavy; and he had not strength to move his poor old

tail more than once. He died with his head on my lap. He seemed to beg me, and I took him, and he breathed

twice, and that was his end. Pluto! old dog! Well, for you or for me, brother, we could not have a better wish.

As for me, death! . . . When we know we are to die! Only let my darling live! that is my prayer, and that we

two may not be separated till I am taken to their grave. Father bought ground for four his wife and himself

and his two children. It does not oblige us to be buried there, but could we have any other desire?"

"Look ahead, my dear girl. Help me to finish this wine. There's nothing like good hard walking to give

"I think it so good," Carinthia replied, after drinking from the cup. "In England they do not grow wine. Are

"Some of them, when you know them. `Warm,' is hardly the word. Winter's warm on skates. You must do a

great deal for yourself. They don't boil over. By the way, don't expect much of your uncle."

"He gives you a lodging in his house, and foodenough, we'll hope. You won't see company or much of

"I cannot exist without being loved. I do not care for company. He must love me a little."

"He is one of the warmhearted racehe's mother's brother; but where his heart is, I've not discovered. Bear

The dreary vision of a home with an unloving uncle was not brightened by the alternative of her brother's

"We have no debts," he answered. "We have a claim on the Government here for indemnification for property

taken to build a fortress upon one of the passes into Italy. Father bought the land, thinking there would be a

yield of ore thereabout; and they have seized it, rightly enough, but they dispute our claim for the valuation

we put on it. A small sum they would consent to pay. It would be a very small sum, and I'm my father's son, I

They performed a sacrifice of the empty bottle and cracked cup on the site of their meal, as if it had been a

ceremony demanded from travellers, and, leaving them in fragments, proceeded on their journey refreshed.

Walking was now high enjoyment, notwithstanding the force of the sun, for they were a hardy couple,

requiring no more than sufficient nourishment to combat the elements with an exulting blood. Besides they

loved mountain air and scenery, and each step to the ridge of the pass they climbed was an advance in

splendour. Peaks of ashen hue and pale dry red and pale sulphur pushed up, straight, forked, twisted, naked,

striking their minds with an indeterminate ghostliness of Indian, so strange they were in shape and colouring.

These sharp points were the first to greet them between the blue and green. A depression of the pass to the

left gave sight of the points of black fir forest below, round the girths of the barren shafts. Mountain blocks

appeared pushing up in front, and a mountain wall and woods on it, and mountains in the distance, and cliffs

riven with falls of water that were silver skeins, down lower to meadows, villages and spires, and lower

finally to the whole valley of the foaming river, field and river seeming in imagination rolled out from the

She said it upon love's instinct to halo the scene with. something beyond present vision, and to sanctify it for

A smooth fold of cloud, moveless along one of the upper pastures, and still dense enough to be luminous in

They watched it lying in the form of a fish, leviathan diminished, as they descended their path; and the head

was lost, the tail spread peacockwise, and evaporated slowly in that likeness; and soft to a breath of air as

The bluest bright day of the year was shining. Chillon led the descent. With his trim and handsome figure

before her, Carinthia remembered the current saying, that he should have been the girl and she the boy. That

was because he resembled their mother in face. But the build of his limbs and shoulders was not feminine. To

her admiring eyes, he had a look superior to simple strength and grace; the look of a great skybird about to

mount, a fountainlike energy of stature, delightful to her contemplation. And he had the mouth women put

faith in for decision and fixedness. She did, most fully; and reflecting how entirely she did so, the thought

She allowed it to surprise her, not choosing to revert to an uneasy sensation of the morning.

That some one, her process of reasoning informed her, was necessarily an English young lady. She reserved

her questions till they should cease this hopping and heeling down the zigzag of the slippery pathtrack.

When children they had been collectors of beetles and butterflies, and the flying by of a "royalmantle," the

purple butterfly grandly fringed, could still remind Carinthia of the event it was of old to spy and chase one.

Chillon himself was not above the sentiment of their very early days; he stopped to ask if she had seen that

lustrous bluewing, a rarer species, prized by youngsters, shoot through the chestnut trees: and they both

paused for a moment, gazing into the fairyland of infancy, she seeing with her brother's eyes, this prince of

the realm having escaped her. He owned he might have been mistaken, as the brilliant fellow flew swift and

high between leaves, like an ordinary fritillary. Not the less did they get their glimpse of the wonders in the

"An Auerhahn, Chillon!" she said, picturing the maturer day when she had scaled perilous heights with him at

night to stalk the blackcock in the prime of the morning. She wished they could have had another such

adventure to stamp the old home on his heart freshly, to the exclusion of beautiful English faces.

On the level of the valley, where they met the torrentriver, walking side by side with him, she ventured an

"I have only seen a few of them, once at Vienna, and at Venice, and those Baths we are going to; and at

It was touching that she should be such a stranger to her countrywomen! He drew a portraitcase from his

breastpocket, pressing the spring, and handed it to her, saying: "There is one." He spoke indifferently, but as

soon as she had seen the face inside it, with a look at him and a deep breath, she understood that he was an

He did not ask an opinion upon the beauty she had seen. His pace increased, and she hastened her steps

beside him. She had not much to learn when some minutes later she said: "Shall I see her, Chillon?"

"What a pity!" Carinthia stepped faster, enlightened as to his wish to get to the Baths without delay; and her

heart softened in reflecting how readily he had yielded to her silly preference for going on foot.

Her cry of regret was equivocal; it produced no impression on him. They reached a village where her leader

deemed it advisable to drive for the remainder of the distance up the valley to the barrier snowmountain.

She assented instantly; she had no longer any active wishes of her own, save to make amends to her brother,

who was and would ever be her brother: she could not be robbed of their relationship.

Something undefined in her feeling of possession she had been robbed of, she knew it by her spiritlessness;

and she would fain have attributed it to the idle motion of the car, now and then stupidly jolting her on, after

the valiant exercise of her limbs. They were in a land of waterfalls and busy mills, a narrowing vale where the

runs of grass grew short and wild, and the glacierriver roared for the leap, more foam than water, and the

savagery, naturally exciting to her, breathed of its lair among the rocks and icefields.

Her brother said: "There he is." She saw the whitecrowned king of the region, of whose near presence to her

old home she had been accustomed to think proudly, and she looked at him without springing to him, and

continued imaging her English home and her loveless uncle, merely admiring the scene, as if the fire of her

soul had been extinguished."Marry, and be a blessing to a husband." Chillon's words whispered of the

But who would marry me! she thought. An unreproved sensation of melting pervaded her; she knew her

capacity for gratitude, and conjuring it up in her heart, there came with it the noble knightly gentleman who

would really stoop to take a plain girl by the hand, release her, and say: "Be mine!" His vizor was down, of

course. She had no power of imagining the lineaments of that prodigy. Or was he a dream? He came and

went. Her mother, not unkindly, sadly, had counted her poor girl's chances of winning attention and a

husband. Her father had doted on her face; but, as she argued, her father had been attracted by her mother, a

beautiful woman, and this was a circumstance that reflected the greater hopelessness on her prospects. She

bore a likeness to her father, little to her mother, though he fancied the reverse and gave her the mother's lips

and hair. Thinking of herself, however, was destructive to the form of her mirror of knightliness: he wavered,

he fled for good, as the rosy vapour born of our sensibility must do when we relapse to coldness, and the

more completely when we try to command it. No, she thought, a plain girl should think of work, to earn her

The laugh abashed her; she murmured of women being good nurses for wounded soldiers, if they were good

walkers to march with the army; and, as evidently it sounded witless to him, she added, to seem reasonable:

He made queer eyes over the puzzle to connect the foregoing and the succeeding in her remarks, but

Her ear seized on the stress of his voice. "Henrietta!" She chose that name for the name of the person

disturbing her; it fused best, she thought, with the new element she had been compelled to take into her

A sister could go, if it were permitted by the authorities, and be near her brother to nurse him in case of

wounds; others would be unable to claim the privilege. That was her meaning, involved with the hazy project

of earning an independence; but she could not explain it, and Chillon set her down for one of the inexplicable

She was inwardly warned of having talked foolishly and she held her tongue. Her humble and modest

jealousy, scarce deserving the title, passed with a sigh or two. It was her first taste of life in the world.

A fit of heavymindedness ensued, that heightened the contrast her recent mood had bequeathed, between

herself, ignorant as she was, and those ladies. Their names, Livia and Henrietta, soared above her and sang

the music of the splendid spheres. Henrietta was closer to earth, for her features had been revealed; she was

therefore the dearer, and the richer for him who loved her, being one of us, though an overearthly one; and

Carinthia gave her to Chillon, reserving for herself a handmaiden's place within the circle of their happiness.

This done, she sat straight in the car. It was toiling up the steep ascent of a glen to the mountain village, the

last of her native province. Her proposal to walk was accepted, and the speeding of her blood, now that she

had mastered the new element in it, soon restored her to her sisterly affinity with natural glories. The sunset

was on yonder side of the snows. Here there was a feast of variouslytinted sunset shadows on snow,

meadows, rock, river, serrated cliff. The peaked cap of the rushing rockdotted sweeps of upward snow

caught a scarlet illumination: one flank of the white in heaven was violetted wonderfully.

At nightfall, under a clear black sky, alive with wakeful fires round head and breast of the great Alp, Chillon

and Carinthia strolled out of the village, and he told her some of his hopes. They referred to inventions of

destructive weapons, which were primarily to place his country out of all danger from a world in arms; and

also, it might be mentioned, to bring him fortune. "For I must have money!" he said, sighing it out like a

deliberate oath. He and his uncle were associated in the inventions. They had an improved rocket that would

force military chiefs to change their tactics: they had a new powder, a rifle, a model musketthe latter based

on his own plans; and a scheme for fortress artillery likely to turn the preponderance in favour of the

defensive once again. "And that will be really doing good," said Chillon, "for where it's with the offensive,

Carinthia warmly agreed with him, but begged him be sure his uncle divided the profits equally. She

"No, no, no!" said she. "And what if he is, and your Henrietta does not choose him? Now let me think what I

By starlight they sprang to their feet and departed the next morning, in the steps of a guide carrying, Chillon

"Father!" exclaimed Carinthia on her swift inward breath, for this one of the names he had used to give to her

THREE parts down a swift decline of shattered slate, where travelling stones loosened from rows of scree

hurl away at a bound after one roll over, there sat a youth dusty and torn, nursing a bruised leg, not in the

easiest of postures, on a sharp tooth of rock, that might at any moment have broken from the slanting slab at

the end of which it formed a stump, and added him a second time to the general crumble of the mountain. He

had done a portion of the descent in excellent imitation of the detached fragments, and had parted company

with his alpenstock and plaid; preserving his hat and his knapsack. He was alone, disabled, and cheerful; in

doubt of the arrival of succour before he could trust his left leg to do him further service unaided; but it was

morning still, the sun was hot, the air was cool; just the tempering opposition to render existence pleasant as a

piece of vegetation, especially when there has been a question of your ceasing to exist; and the view was of a

sustaining sublimity of desolateness: crag and snow overhead; a gloomy vale below; no life either of bird or

herd; a voiceless region where there had once been roars at the bowling of a hill from a mountain to the deep,

He would have enjoyed the scene unremittingly, like the philosopher he pretended to be, in a disdain of

civilization and the ambitions of men, had not a contest with earth been forced on him from time to time to

keep the heel of his right foot, dug in shallow shale, fixed and supporting. As long as it held he was happy

and maintained the attitude of a guitarplayer, thrumming the calf of the useless leg to accompany tuneful

thoughts, but the inevitable lapse and slide of the foot recurred, and the philosopher was exhibited as an

infant learning to crawl. The seat, moreover, not having been fashioned for him or for any soft purpose,

resisted his pressure and became a thing of violence, that required to be humiliatingly coaxed. His last

resource to propitiate it was counselled by nature turned mathematician: tenacious extension solved the

problem; he lay back at his length, and with his hat over his eyes consented to see nothing for the sake of

comfort. Thus he was perfectly rational, though when others beheld him he appeared the insanest of mortals.

A girl's voice gave out the mountain carol ringingly above. His heart and all his fancies were in motion at the

sound. He leaned on an elbow to listen; the slide threatened him, and he resumed his full stretch, determined

to take her for a dream. He was of the class of youths who, in apprehension that their bright season may not

be permanent, choose to fortify it by a systematic contempt of material realities unless they come in the

fairest of shapes, and as he was quite sincere in this feeling and election of the right way to live,

disappointment and sullenness overcame him on hearing men's shouts and steps; despite his helpless

condition he refused to stir, for they had jarred on his dream. Perhaps his temper, unknown to himself, had

been a little injured by his mishap, and he would not have been sorry to charge them with want of common

humanity in passing him; or he did not think his plight so bad, else he would have bawled after them had they

gone by: for the youths of his description are fools only upon system, however earnestly they indulge the

present selfpunishing sentiment. The party did not pass; they stopped short, they consulted, and a feminine

tongue more urgent than the others, and very musical, sweet to hear anywhere, put him in tune. She said,

The guide scrambled along to him, and at a closer glance shouted: "The Englishman!" wheeling his finger to

His master called to know if there were broken bones, as if he could stop for nothing else.

The cripple was raised. The gentleman and lady made their way to him, and he tried his hardest to keep from

tottering on the slope in her presence. No injury had been done to the leg; there was only a stiffness, and an

idiotic doubling of the knee, as though at each step his leg pronounced a dogged negative to the act of

walking. He said something equivalent to "this donkey leg," to divert her charitable eyes from a countenance

dancing with ugly twitches. She was the Samaritan. A sufferer discerns his friend, though it be not the one

who physically assists him: he is inclined by nature to put material aid at a lower mark than gentleness, and

her brief words of encouragement, the tone of their delivery yet more, were medical to his blood, better help

than her brother's iron arm, he really believed. Her brother and the guide held him on each side, and she led to

pick out the safer footing for him; she looked round and pointed to some projection that would form a step;

she drew attention to views here and there, to win excuses for his resting; she did not omit to soften her

brother's visible impatience as well, and this was the art which affected her keenly sensible debtor most.

Carinthia halted, leaning on her staff: "But I had the same wish. They told us at the inn of an Englishman who

left last night to sleep on the mountain, and would go alone; and did I not say, brother, that must be true love

"These freaks get us a bad name on the Continent," her brother replied. He had no sympathy with nonsense,

and naturally not with a youth who smelt of being a dreamy romancer and had caused the name of

Englishman to be shouted in his ear in derision. And the fellow might delay his arrival at the Baths and sight

They managed to get him hobbling and slipping to the first green tufts of the base, where long black tongues

of slate rubble pouring into the grass, like shorewaves that have spent their burden, seem about to draw

back to bring the mountain down. Thence to the level pasture was but a few skips performed sliding.

"Pretty well, I think." He tried his foot on the ground, and then stretched his length, saying that it only wanted

rest. Anton pressed a hand at his ankle and made him wince, but the bones were sound, leg and hip not worse

than badly bruised. He was advised by Anton to plant his foot in the first running water he came to, and he

"Now you can leave me; and let me thank you. Half an hour will set me right. My name is Woodseer, if ever

Chillon nodded a hurried goodbye, without a thought of giving his name in return. But Carinthia had thrown

herself on the grass. Her brother asked her in dismay if she was tired. She murmured to him: "I should like to

Chillon cast hungry eyes on his watch: "Five minutes, then." He addressed Mr. Woodseer, who was reposing,

indifferent to time, hardby: "Your objection to guides might have taught you a sharp lesson. It's like

declining to have a master in studying a sciencetrusting to instinct for your knowledge of a bargain. One

"I'd rather risk it," the young man replied. "These guides kick the soul out of scenery. I came for that and not

"Besides I've a slack purse, and shun guides and inns when I can. I care for open air, colour, flowers, weeds,

birds, insects, mountains. There's a world behind the mask. I call this life; and the town's a boiling pot,

intolerably stuffy. My one ambition is to be out of it. I thank heaven I have not another on earth. Yes, I care

for my notebook, because it's of no use to a human being except me. I slept beside a spring last night, and I

never shall like a bedroom so well. I think I have discovered the great secret: I may be wrong, of course."

Carinthia expected the revelation of a notable secret, but none came; or if it did it eluded her grasp:he was

praising contemplation, he was praising tobacco. He talked of the charm of poverty upon a settled income of

a very small sum of money, the fruit of a compact he would execute with the town to agree to his perpetual

exclusion from it, and to retain his identity, and not be the composite which every townsman was. He talked

of Buddha. He said: "Here the brook's the brook, the mountain's the mountain: they are as they always were."

"You'd have men be the same," Chillon remarked, as to a nursling prattler, and he rejoined: "They've lost

more than they've gained; though," he admitted, "there has been some gain, in a certain way."

Fortunately for them, young men have not the habit of reflecting upon the indigestion of ideas they receive

from members of their community, sometimes upon exchange. They compare a view of life with their own

view, to condemn it summarily; and he was a curious object to Chillon as the perfect opposite of himself.

"I would advise you," Chillon said, "to get a pair of Styrian boots, if you intend to stay in the Alps. Those

Chillon drew out his watch. "Come, Carinthia, we must be off." He proposed his guide, and, as Anton was

rejected, he pointed the route over the head of the valley, stated the distance to an inn that way, saluted and

Mr. Woodseer, partly rising, presumed, in raising his hat and thanking Carinthia, to touch her fingers. She

smiled on him, frankly extending her open hand, and pointing the route again, counselling him to rest at the

She tripped away to her brother and was watched through the whiffs of a pipe far up the valley, guiltless of

any consciousness of producing an impression. But her mind was with the stranger sufficiently to cause her to

say to Chillon, at the close of a dispute between him and Anton on the interesting subject of the growth of the

Chillon looked over his shoulder. "He's there still; he's fond of solitude. And, Carin, my dear, don't give your

She was answered with an "Oh," the tone of which balanced lightly on the neutral line. "Some of the ideas he

has are Lord Fleetwood's, I hear, and one can understand them in a man of enormous wealth, who doesn't

know what to do with himself and is deadsick of flattery; though it seems odd for an English nobleman to be

"But a fellow who probably has to make his tray in the world!and he despises ambition!" . . . Chillon

dropped him. He was antipathetic to eccentrics, and his soldierly and social training opposed the profession

of heterodox ideas: to have listened seriously to them coming from the mouth of an unambitious bootmaker's

son involved him in the absurdity. He considered that there was no harm in the lad, rather a commendable

sort of courage and some notion of manners; allowing for his ignorance of the convenable in putting out his

hand to take a young lady's, with the plea of thanking her. He hoped she would be more on her guard.

Carinthia was sure she had the name of the nobleman wishing to bestow his title upon the beautiful Henrietta.

Lord Fleetwood! That slender thread given her of the character of her brother's rival who loved the mountains

was woven in her mind with her passing experience of the youth they had left behind them, until the two

became one, a highly transfigured one, and the mountain scenery made him very threatening to her brother. A

silkyhaired youth, browneyed, unconquerable in adversity, immensely rich, fond of solitude, curled,

decorated, bejewelled by all the elves and gnomes of inmost solitude, must have marvellous attractions, she

feared. She thought of him so much, that her humble spirit conceived the stricken soul of the woman as of

necessity the pursuer; as shamelessly, though timidly, as she herself pursued in imagination the enchanted

secret of the mountainland. She hoped her brother would not supplicate, for it struck her that the lover who

He grimaced slightly, for her sake; he would have liked to inform her, for the sake of educating her in the

customs of the world she was going to enter, that the word "gentleman" conveys in English a special

Her expression of wonder whether they were to meet him again gave Chillon the opportunity of saying: "It's

"Strange or not!" . . . Chillon thought he had said sufficient. She was under his protectorship, otherwise he

would not have alluded to the observance of class distinctions. He felt them personally in this case because of

their seeming to stretch grotesquely by the pretentious heterodoxy of the young fellow, whom, nevertheless,

thinking him over now that he was mentioned, he approved for his manliness in bluntly telling his origin and

A chalet supplied them with fresh milk, and the inn of a village on a perch with the midday meal. Their

appetites were princely and swept over the little inn like a conflagration. Only after clearing it did they

remember the rearward pedestrian, whose probable wants Chillon was urged by Carinthia to speak of to their

host. They pushed on, clambering up, scurrying down, tramping gaily, till by degrees the chambers of

Carinthia's imagination closed their doors and would no longer intercommunicate. Her head refused to

interest her, and left all activity to her legs and her eyes, and the latter became unobservant, except of

foottracks, animallike. She felt that she was a fine machine, and nothing else: and she was rapidly

"So that they may not think me so ignorant, brother." She stumbled on the helpless word in a hasty effort to

He laughed. Her desire to meet the critical English ladies with a towering reputation in one department of

human enterprise was comprehensible, considering the natural apprehensiveness of the halfwild girl before

such a meeting. As it often happens with the silly phrases of simple people, the wrong word, foolish although

it was, went to the heart of the hearer and threw a more charitable light than ridicule on her. So that they may

know I can do something they cannot do, was the interpretation. It showed her deep knowledge of her

Anxious to cheer her, he said: "Come, come, you can dance. You dance well, mother has told me, and she

was a judge. You ride, you swim, you have a voicefor country songs, at all events. And you're a bit of a

botanist too. You're good at English and German; you had a French governess for a couple of years. By the

way, you understand the use of a walkingstick in selfdefence: you could handle a sword on occasion."

"With a good aim, too. Father told me you could. How fond he was of his girl! Well, bear in mind that father

He assured her he had a mind to have a bugle blown at the entrance of the Baths for a challenge to the bathers

"I am glad of that!" Carinthia sighed out heartily. "And he is with her? And likes you, Chillon?"

At sunset they stood on the hills overlooking the basin of the Baths, all enfolded in swathes of pink and

crimson up to the shining grey of a high heaven that had the fresh brightness of the morning.

"We are not tired in the slightest," said Carinthia, trifling with the vision of a cushioned rest below. "I could

"Wait till you wake up in your little bed tomorrow," Chillon replied stoutly, to drive a chill from his lover's

IS not the lover a prophet? He that fervently desires may well be one; his hurried nature is alive with warmth

to break the possible blow: and if his fears were not needed they were shadows; and if fulfilled, was he not

convinced of his misfortune by a dark anticipation that rarely erred? Descending the hills, he remembered

several omens: the sun had sunk when he looked down on the villas and clustered houses, not an edge of the

orb had been seen; the admiral's quarters in the broad faced hotel had worn an appearance resembling the

empty house of yesterday; the encounter with the fellow on the rocks had a bad whisper of impish tripping.

A letter was handed to Chillon in the hall of the admiral's hotel, where his baggage had already been

delivered. The manager was deploring the circumstance that his rooms were full to the roof, when Chillon

said: "Well, we must wash and eat"; and Carinthia, from watching her brother's forehead during his perusal of

the letter, declared her readiness for anything. He gave her the letter to read by herself while preparing to sit

at table, unwilling to ask her for a further tax on her energiesbut it was she who had spoken of going on!

He thought of it as of a debt she had contracted and might be supposed to think payable to their misfortune.

"We can have a carriage here, Chillon; order a carriage; I shall get as much sleep in a carriage as in a bed; I

shall enjoy driving at night," she said immediately, and strongly urged it and forced him to yield, the manager

In the privacy of her room, admiring the clear flowing hand, she read the words, delicious in their strangeness

to her, notwithstanding the heavy news, as though they were sung out of a nightsky:

"We start at noon today. Sailing orders have been issued, and I could only have resisted them in my own

person by casting myself overboard. I go like the boat behind the vessel. You were expected yesterday, at

latest this morning. I have seen boxes in the hall, with a name on them not foreign to me. Why does the

master tarry? Sir, of your valiance you should have held to your good vow, quoth the damozel, for now you

see me sore perplexed and that you did not your devoir is my affliction. Where lingers chivalry, she should

have proceeded, if not with my knight? I feast on your regrets. I would not have you less than miserable: and

I fear the reason is, that I am not so very, very sure you will be so at all or very hugely, as I would command

it of you for just time enough to see that change over your eyebrows I know so well.

"If you had seen a certain Henrietta yesterday you would have the picture of how you ought to look. The

admiral was heard welcoming a new arrivalyou can hear him. She ran down the stairs quicker than any

cascade of this district, she would have made a bet with Livia that it could be no one elseher hand was

"Let the guilty absent suffer for causing such a betrayal of disappointment. I must be avenged! But if indeed

you are unhappy and would like to chide the innocent, I am full of compassion for the poor gentleman

inheriting my legitimate feelings of wrath, and beg merely that he will not pour them out on me with pen and

"Time pressing, I chatter no more. The destination is Livia's beloved Baden. We rest a night in the city of

Mozart, a night at Munich, a night at Stuttgart. Baden will detain my cousin full a week. She has Captain

Abrane and Sir Meeson Corby in attendance her long shadow and her short: both devoted to Lord F., to

win her smile, and how he drives them! The captain has been paraded on the promenade, to the stupefaction

of the foreigner. Princes, counts, generals, diplomats passed under him in awe. I am told that he is called St.

"Why do we go thus hastily?my friend, this letter has to be concealed. I know some one who sees in the

"Think no harm of Livia. She is bent upon my worldly advantage, and that is plain even to the person

rejecting it. How much more so must it be to papa, though he likes you, and when you are near him would

perhaps, in a fit of unworldliness, be almost as reckless as the creature he calls madcap and would rather call

countess. No! sooner with a Willo'thewisp, my friend. Who could ever know where the man was when he

himself never knows where he is. He is the wind that bloweth as it listethbecause it is without an aim or

always with a new one. And am I the one to direct him? I need direction. My lord and sovereign must fix my

mind. I am volatile, earthly, not to be trusted if I do not worship. He himself said to me thathe reads our

characters. `Nothing but a proved hero will satisfy Henrietta,' his words! And the hero must be shining like a

beaconfire kept in a blaze. Quite true; I own it. Is Chillon Kirby satisfied? He ought to be.

"But oh!to be yoked is an insufferable thought, unless we name all the conditions. But to be yoked to a

creature of impulses! Really I could only describe his erratic nature by commending you to the study of a

dragonfly. It would map you an idea of what he has been in the twentyfour hours since we had him here.

They tell me a vain sort of person is the cause. Can she be the cause of his resolving to have a residence here,

to buy up half the valleyerecting a royal palaceand marking out the siteraving about it in the wildest

language, poetical if it had been a little reasonable:and then, after a night, suddenly, unaccountably, hating

the place, and being under the necessity of flying from it in hot haste, tearing us all away, as if we were

attached to a kite that will neither mount nor fall, but rushes about headlong. Has he heard, or suspected? or

seen certain boxes bearing a name? Livia has no suspicion, though she thinks me wonderfully contented in so

dull a place, where it has rained nine days in a fortnight. I ask myself whether my manner of greeting him

betrayed my expectation of another. He has brains. It is the greatest of errors to suppose him at all like the

common run of rich young noblemen. He seems to thirst for brilliant wits and original sayings. His ambition

is to lead all England in everything! I readily acknowledge that he has generous ideas too; but try to hold him,

deny him his liberty, and it would be seen how desperate and relentless he would be to get loose. Of this I am

convinced: he would be either the most abject of lovers, or a woman (if it turned out not to be love) would

find him the most unscrupulous of yokefellows. Yokefellow! She would not have her reason in consenting. A

lamb and a furious bull! Papa and I have had a serious talk. He shut his ears to my comparisons, but admits,

that as I am the principal person concerned, etc. Rich and a nobleman is too tempting for an anxious father;

and Livia's influence is paramount. She has not said a syllable in depreciation of you. That is to her credit.

She also admits that I must yield freely if at all, and she grants me the use of similes; but her tactics are to

contest them one by one, and the admirable pretender is not as shifty as the mariner's breeze, he is not like the

wandering spark in burnt paper, of which you cannot say whether it is chasing or chased: it is I who am the

shifty Pole to the steadiest of magnets. She is a princess in other things besides her superiority to Physics.

"My Diary of today is all bestowed on you. What have I to write in it except the pair of commas under the

"O that I were with your sister now, on one side of her idol, to correct her extravagant idolatry! I long for her.

"You have said (I have it written) that men who are liked by men are the best friends for women. In which

case, the earl should be worthy of our friendship; he is liked. Captain Abrane and Sir Meeson, in spite of the

hard service he imposes on them with such comical haughtiness, incline to speak well of him, and Methuen

Rivershere for two days on his way to his embassy at Viennaassured us he is the rarest of gentlemen on

the point of honour of his word. They have stories of him, to confirm Livia's eulogies, showing him

punctilious to chivalry. No man alive is like him in that, they say. He grieves me. All that you have to fear is

my pity for one so sensitive. So speed, sir! It is not good for us to be much alone, and I am alone when you

"How grand that music makes the dullest world appear in a minute. There is a magic in it to bring you to me

from the most dreadful of distances.Chillon! it would kill me! Writing here and you perhaps behind the

hill, I can hardly bear it;I am torn away, my hand will not any more. This music burst out to mock me!

Carinthia kissed the letter on that last line. It seemed to her to end in a celestial shower.

She was oppressed by wonder of the writer who could run like the rill of the mountains in written speech; and

her recollection of the contents perpetually hurried to the close, which was more in her way of writing, for

She did not speak of the letter to her brother when she returned it. A night in the carriage, against his

shoulder, was her happy prospect, in the thought that she would be with her dearest all night, touching him

asleep, and in the sweet sense of being near to the beloved of the fairest angel of her sex. They pursued their

journey soon after Anton was dismissed with warm shakes of the hand and appointments for a possible year

The blast of the postillion's horn on the dark highway moved Chillon to say: "This is what they call posting,

She replied: "Tell me, brother: I do not understand, `Let none these marks efface,' at the commencement,

"They are quoted from the verses of a lord who was a poet, addressed to the castle on Lake Leman. She will

The mention of the lord set Carinthia thinking of the lord whom that beautiful SHE pitied because she was

forced to wound him and he was very sensitive. Wrapped in Henrietta, she slept through the joltings of the

carriage, the grinding of the wheels, the blowing of the horn, the flashes of the late moonlight and the

THE young man who fancied he had robed himself in the plain homespun of a natural philosopher at the age

of twentythree journeyed limping leisurely in the mountain maid Carinthia's footsteps, thankful to the Fates

for having seen her; and reproving the remainder of superstition within him, which would lay him open to

smarts of evil fortune if he encouraged a senseless gratitude for good; seeing that we are simply to take what

happens to us. The little inn of the village on the perch furnished him a night's lodging and a laugh of

satisfaction to hear of a young lady and gentleman, and their guide, who had devoured everything eatable half

a day in advance of him, all save the bread and butter, and a few scraps of meat, apologetically spread for his

repast by the maid of the inn. not enough for a bantam cock, she said, promising eggs for breakfast. He

vowed with an honest heart, that it was more than enough, and he was nourished by sympathy with the

appetites of his precursors and the maid's description of their deeds. That name, Carinthia, went a good way

Farther on he had plenty, but less contentment. He was compelled to acknowledge that he had expected to

meet Carinthia again at the Baths. Her absence dealt a violent shock to the aerial structure he dwelt in; for

though his ardour for the life of the solitudes was unfeigned, as was his calm overlooking of social

distinctions, the selfindulgent dreamer became troubled with an alarming sentience, that for him to share the

passions of the world of men was to risk the falling lower than most. Women are a cause of dreams, but they

are dreaded enemies of his kind of dream, deadly enemies of the immaterial dreamers; and should one of

them be taken on board a vessel of the vapourish texture young Woodseer sailed in above the clouds lightly

while he was in it alone, questions of past, future, and present, the three weights upon humanity, bear it down,

and she must go, or the vessel sinks. And cast out of it, what was he? The asking exposed him to the steadiest

wind the civilized world is known to blow. From merely thinking upon one of the daughters of earth, he was

made to feel his position in that world, though he refused to understand it, and assisted by two days of hard

walking he reduced Carinthia to an abstract enthusiasm, no very serious burden. His notebook sustained it

easily. He wrote her name in simple fondness of the name; a verse, and hints for more, and some sentences,

which he thought profound. They were composed as he sat by the roadway, on the tops of hills, and in a boat

crossing a dark green lake deep under wooded mountain walls: things of priceless value.

It happened, that midway on the lake he perceived his boatman about to prime a pistol to murder the

mildeyed stillness, and he called to the man in his best German to desist. During the altercation, there

passed a countryman of his in another of the punts, who said gravely: "I thank you for that." It was early

morning, and they had the lake to themselves, each deeming the other an intruder; for the courtship of

solitude wanes when we are haunted by a second person in pursuit of it; he is discolouring matter in our pure

crystal cup. Such is the worship of the picturesque; and it would appear to say, that the spirit of man finds

itself yet in the society of barbarians. The case admits of good pleading either way, even upon the issue

whether the exclusive or the vulgar be the more barbarous. But in those days the solicitation of the

picturesque had been revived by a poet of some impassioned rhetoric, and two devotees could hardly meet, as

They stepped ashore in turn on the same small shoot of land where a farmhouse near a chapel in the shadow

of cliffs did occasional service for an inn. Each had intended to pass a day and a night in this lonely

dwellingplace by the lake, but a rival was less to be tolerated there than in love, and each awaited the other's

departure, with an air that said: "You are in my sunlight"; and going deeper, more sternly: "Sir, you are an

Woodseer was the more placable of the two; he had taken possession of the bench outside, and he had his

notebook and much profundity to haul up with it while fish were frying. His countryman had rushed inside

to avoid him, and remained there pacing the chamber like a lion newly caged. Their boatmen were brotherly

After eating his fish, Woodseer decided abruptly, that as he could not have the spot to himself, memorable as

it would have been to intermarry with Nature in so sacred a welldepth of the mountains, he had better be

walking and climbing. Another boat paddling up the lake had been spied: solitude was not merely shared with

a rival, but violated by numbers. In the first case, we detest the man; in the second, we fly from an outraged

scene. He wrote a line or so in his book, hurriedly paid his bill, and started, full of the matter he had briefly

At noon, sitting beside the beck that runs from the lake, he was overtaken by the gentleman he had left

behind, and accosted in the informal English style, with all the politeness possible to a nervously blunt

manner: "This book is yours,I have no doubt it is yours; I am glad to be able to restore it; I should be glad

to be the ownerwriter of the contents, I mean. I have to beg your excuse; I found it lying open; I looked at

Woodseer jumped at the sight of his notebook, felt for the emptiness of his pocket, and replied: "Thank you,

"I cannot offer you my apologies as a stranger." Lord Fleetwood was the name given.

The young lord had fair, straight, thin features, with large restless eyes that lighted quickly, and a mouth that

"You could have done the same? I should find it hard to forgive the man who pried into my secret thoughts,"

"Yes, yes. They never last long enough with me. So far I'm safe. One page led to another. You can meditate. I

Woodseer was of that opinion, but modesty urged him to reply with a small flourish. "Just a few heads of

ideas. When the wind puffs down a sooty chimney the air is filled with little blacks that settle pretty much

like the notes in this book of mine. There they wait for another puff, or my fingers to stamp them."

"I could tell you were the owner of that book," said Lord Fleetwood. He swept his forehead feverishly. "What

a power it is to relieve one's brain by writing! May I ask you, which one of the Universities? . . ."

The burden of this question had a ring of irony to one whom it taught to feel rather defiantly, that he carried

the blazon of a reeking tramp. "My University," Woodseer replied, "was a merchant's office in Bremen for

some months. I learnt more Greek and Latin in Bremen than business. I was invalided home, and then tried a

merchant's office in London. I put on my hat one day, and walked into the country. My College fellows were

hawkers, tinkers, tramps and ploughmen, choughs and crows. A volume of our Poets and a History of

Philosophy composed my library. I had scarce any money, so I learnt how to idle inexpensivelya good first

lesson. We're at the bottom of the world when we take to the road, we see men as they were in the

beginningnot so eager for harness till they get acquainted with hunger, as I did, and studied in myself the

Woodseer laughed, adding, that he had been of a serious mind in those days of the alternation of smooth

His nature prompted him to speak of himself with simple candour, as he had done spontaneously to Chillon

Kirby, yet he was now anxious to let his companion know at once the common stub he was made of, together

with the great stuff he contained. He grew conscious of an overanxiety, and was uneasy, recollecting how he

had just spoken about his naturalness, dimly if at all apprehending the cause of this disturbance within. What

is a lord to a philosopher! But the world is around us as a cloak, if not a coat; in his ignorance he supposed it

specially due to a lord seeking acquaintance with him, that he should expose his condition: doing the which

appeared to subject him to parade his intellectual treasures and capacity for shaping sentences; and the effect

upon Lord Fleetwood was an incentive to the display. Nevertheless he had a fretful desire to escape from the

"I do wish it: an hour's walk with you. One does not meet a man like you every day. I have to join a circle of

mine in Baden, but there's no hurry; I could be disengaged for a week. And I have things to ask you, owing to

"Splendid," said Lord Fleetwood; "but don't clap names on the mountains.I saw written in your book: `A

tent for Dada.' You write: `A despotism would procure a perfect solitude, but kill the ghost.' That was my

thought at the place where we were at the lake. I had it. Tell methough I could not have written it, and

`ghost' is just the word, the exact wordtell me, are you of Welsh blood? `Dad' is good Welshpronounce

Woodseer answered: "My mother was a Glamorganshire woman. My father, I know, walked up from Wales,

mending boots on his road for a livelihood. He is not a bad scholar, he knows Greek enough to like it. He is a

Dissenting preacher. When I strike a truism, I've a habit of scoring it to give him a peg or tuning fork for

one of his discourses. He's a man of talent; he taught himself, and he taught me more than I learnt at school.

He is a thinker in his way. He loves Nature too. I rather envy him in some respects. He and I are hunters of

"Ah, and I wanted to ask you," Lord Fleetwood observed, bursting with it, "I was puzzled by a name you

write here and there near the end, and permit me to ask it: Carinthia! It cannot be the country? You write after

the name: `A beautiful Gorgona haggard Venus.' It seized me. I have had the face before my eyes ever

since. You must mean a woman. I can't be deceived in allusions to a woman: they have heart in them. You

met her somewhere about Carinthia, and gave her the name? You writemay I refer to the book?"

He received the book and flew through the leaves: "Here`A panting look': you write again: `A look of

beaten flame: a look of one who has run and at last beholds!' But that is a living face: I see her! Here again:

`From minute to minute she is the rock that loses the sun at night and reddens in the morning.' You could not

create an idea of a woman to move you like that. No one could, I am certain of it, certain; if so, you're a

wizard I swear you are. But that's a face high over beauty. Just to know there is a woman like her, is an

antidote. You compare her to a rock. Who would imagine a comparison of a woman to a rock! But rock is the

very picture of beautiful Gorgon, haggard Venus. Tell me you met her, you saw her. I want only to hear she

lives, she is in the world. Beautiful women compared to roses may whirl away with their handsome dragoons.

A pang from them is a thing to be ashamed of. And there are men who trot about whining with it! But a

Carinthia makes pain honourable. You have done what I thought impossiblefused a woman's face and

grand scenery, to make them inseparable. She might be wicked for me. I should see a bright rim round hatred

of her!the rock you describe. I could endure horrors and not annihilate her! I should think her sacred."

Woodseer turned about to have a look at the man who was even quicker than he at realising a person from a

hint of description, and almost insanely extravagant in the pitch of the things he uttered to a stranger. For

himself, he was open with everybody, his philosophy not allowing that strangers existed on earth. But the

presence of a lord brought the conventional world to his feelings, though at the same time the title seemed to

sanction the exceptional abruptness and wildness of this lord. As for suspecting him to be mad, it would have

been a common idea: no stretching of speech or overstepping of social rules could waken a suspicion so

He said: "I can tell you I met her and she lives. I could as soon swim in that torrent or leap the mountain as

repeat what she spoke, or sketch a feature of her. She goes into the blood, she is a new idea of women. She

has the face that would tempt a gypsy to evil tellings. I could think of it as a history written in a line:

Carinthia, Saint and Martyr! As for comparisons, they are flowers thrown into the fire."

"I have had thatI have thought that," said Lord Fleetwood. "Go on; talk of her, pray; without comparisons.

I detest them. How did you meet her? What made you part? Where is she now? I have no wish to find her, but

Another than Woodseer would have perceived the young lord's malady. Here was one bitten by the serpent of

love, and athirst for an image of the sex to serve for the cooling herb, as youth will be. Woodseer put it down

to a curious imaginative fellowship with himself. He forgot the lord, and supposed he had found his own

likeness, less gifted in speech. After talking of Carinthia more and more in the abstract, he fell upon his

discovery of the Great Secret of life against which his hearer struggled for a time, though that was cooling to

him, too; but ultimately there was no resistance, and so deep did they sink into the idea of pure

contemplation, that the idea of woman seemed to have become a part of it. No stronger proof of their �thereal

conversational earnestness could be offered. A locality was given to the Great Secret, and of course it was the

place where the most powerful recent impression had been stamped on the mind of the discoverer: the

shadowy valley rolling from the slaterock. Woodseer was too artistic a dreamer to present the passing vision

of Carinthia with any associates there. She passed: the solitude accepted her and lost her; and it was the richer

for the one swift gleam: she brought no trouble, she left no regrets; she was the ghost of the rocky obscurity.

"She is a girl?" cried Lord Fleetwood, frowning over an utter revolution of sentiment at the thought of the

beautiful Gorgon being a girl; for, rapid as he was to imagine, he had raised a solid fabric upon his

conception of Carinthia the woman, necessarily the womanlogically. Who but the woman could look the

Gorgon! He tried to explain it to be impossible for a girl to wear the look: and his notion evidently was, that it

had come upon a beautiful face in some staring horror of a world that had bitten the tender woman. She

Woodseer flung out vociferously for the contrary. Who but a girl could look the beautiful Gorgon! What

other could seem an emanation of the mountain solitude? A woman would instantly breathe the world on it to

destroy it. Hers would be the dramatic and not the poetic face. It would shriek of man, wake the echoes with

the tale of man, slaughter all quietude. But a girl's face has no story of poisonous intrusion. She indeed may

be cast in the terrors of Nature, and yet be sweet with Nature, beautiful because she is purely of Nature.

Woodseer did his best to present his view irresistibly. Perhaps he was not clear; it was a piece of skiamachy,

Lord Fleetwood had nothing to say but "Gorgon! a girl a Gorgon!" and it struck Woodseer as intensely

unreasonable, considering that he had seen the girl whom, in his effort to portray her, he had likened to a

beautiful Gorgon. He recounted the scene of the meeting with her, pictured it in effective colours, but his

companion gave no response, nor a nod. They ceased to converse, and when the young lord's hired carriage

drew up on the road, Woodseer required persuasion to accompany him. They were both in their different

stations young tyrants of the world, ready to fight the world and one another for not having their immediate

view of it such as they wanted it. They agreed, however, not to sleep in the city. Beds were to be had near the

top of a mountain on the other side of the Salza, their driver informed them, and vowing themselves to that

particular height, in a mutual disgust of the city, they waxed friendlier, with a reserve.

Woodseer soon had experience that he was receiving exceptional treatment from Lord Fleetwood, whose

manservant was on the steps of the hotel in Salzburg on the lookout for his master.

Sir Meeson Corby appeared; Lord Fleetwood cut him short: "You're in a hurry; go at once, don't wait for me;

I join you in Baden.Do me the favour to eat with me," he turned to Woodseer. "And here, Corby! tell the

countess I have a friend to bear me company, and there is to be an extra bedroom secured at her hotel. That

swinery of a place she insists on visiting is usually crammed. With you there," he turned to Woodseer, "I

might find it agreeable.You can take my man, Corby; I shall not want the fellow."

"Positively, my dear Fleetwood, you know," Sir Meeson expostulated, "I am under orders; I don't see howI

Sir Meeson Corby was a plump little beau of forty, at war with his fat and accounting his tight blue tail coat

and brass buttons a victory. His tightness made his fatness elastic; he looked wound up for a dance, and could

hardly hold on a leg; but the presentation of a creature in a battered hat and soiled garments, currying a

tattered knapsack half slung, lank and with disorderly locks, as the Earl of Fleetwood's friendthe friend of

the wealthiest nobleman of Great Britain!fixed him in a perked attitude of inquiry that exhausted

interrogatives. Woodseer passed him, slouching a bow. The circular stare of Sir Meeson seemed unable to

contract. He directed it on Lord Fleetwood, and was then reminded that he dealt with prickles.

"Where have you been?" he said, blinking to refresh his eyeballs. "I missed you, I ran round and round the

Lord Fleetwood took Woodseer's arm. "Do you eat with us?" he asked the baronet, who had stayed his eating

"Do you wash, sir, before eating?" Sir Meeson said to Woodseer, caressing his hands when they had seated

Sir Meeson, of course, could not hear that. He requested the waiter to show the gentleman to a room.

Lord Fleetwood ordered the waiter to bring a handbasin and towel. "We're off directly and must eat at

"Soapsoap! my dear Fleetwood," Sir Meeson knuckled on the table, to impress it that his appetite and his

gorge demanded a thorough cleansing of those fingers, if they were to sit at one board.

Woodseer had risen. Lord Fleetwood motioned him down. He kept an eye dead as marble on Corby, who

muttered: "You can't mean that you ask me? . . ." But the alternative was forced on Sir Meeson by too strong

a power of the implacable eye; there was thunder in it, a continuity of gaze forcefuller than repetitions of the

word. He knew Lord Fleetwood. Men privileged to attend on him were dogs to the flinty young despot: they

were sure to be called upon to expiate the faintest offence to him. He had hastily to consider, that he was

banished beyond appeal, with the whole torture of banishment to an adorer of the Countess Livia, or else the

mad behest must be obeyed. He protested, shrugged, sat fast, and sprang up, remarking, that he went with all

He was affecting the excessively obsequious when he came back bearing his metal soapcase. The

performance was checked by another look solid as shot, and as quick. Woodseer, who would have done for

Sir Meeson Corby or Lazarus what had been done for him, thought little of the service, but so intense a

peremptoriness in the look of an eye made him uncomfortable in his own sense of independence. The

humblest citizen of a free nation has that warning at some notable exhibition of tyranny in a neighbouring

Lord Fleetwood led an easy dialogue with him and Sir Meeson, on their different themes immediately, which

was not less impressive to an observer. He listened to Sir Meeson's entreaties that he should start at once for

Baden, and appeared to pity the poor gentleman, condemned by his office to hang about him in terror of his

liege lady's displeasure. Presently, near the close of the meal, drawing a ring from his finger, he handed it to

the baronet, and said, "Give her that. She knows I shall follow that." He added to himself:I shall have

illluck till I have it back! and he asked Woodseer whether he put faith in the virtue of talismans.

"I have never possessed one," said Woodseer, with his natural frankness. "It would have gone long before this

Sir Meeson heard him, and instantly urged Lord Fleetwood not to think of dismissing his man Francis. "I beg

it, Fleetwood! I beg you to take the man. Her ladyship will receive me badly, ring or no ring, if she hears of

your being left alone. I really can't present myself. I shall not go, not go. I say no."

He turned to Woodseer with an air of deference, and requested the privilege of glancing at his notebook

again, and scanned it closely at one of the pages. "I believe it true," he cried; "I had a half recollection of

itI have had some such thought, but never could put it in words. You have thought deeply."

Sir Meeson stared at them in turn. Judging by their talk and the effect produced on the earl, he took Woodseer

He drew Fleetwood aside. A word was whispered, and they broke asunder with a snap. Francis was called.

His master gave him his keys, and despatched him into the town to purchase a knapsack or bag for the outfit

of a jolly beggar. The prospect delighted Lord Fleetwood. He sang notes from the deep chest, flaunting like

an opera brigand, and contemplating his wretched satellite's indecision with brimming amusement.

"Wouldn't it be expedient, Fleetwood . . ." Sir Meeson suggested a treasurer in the person of himself.

"But I am not Abrane, I'm not Abrane! I never play, I have no mania, none. It would be prudent, Fleetwood."

"The slightest bulging of a pocket would show on you, Corby; and they would be at you, they would fall on

you and pluck you to have another fling. I'd rather my money should go to a knight of the road than feed that

dragon's jaw. A highwayman seems an honest fellow compared with your honourable corporation of

flycatchers. I could surrender to him with some satisfaction after a trial of the better man. I've tried these

It had to be explained to Woodseer what was meant by trying the tables. "Not I," said he, in strong contempt

Lord Fleetwood studied him half a minute, as if measuring and discarding a suspicion of the young

Sir Meeson Corby accompanied the oddly assorted couple through the town and a short way along the road to

the mountain, for the sake of quieting his conscience upon the subject of his leaving them together. He could

not have sat dorm a second time at a table with those hands. He said it:he could not have done the thing.

So the best he could do was to let them go. Like many of his class, he had a mind open to the effect of

striking contrasts, and the spectacle of the wealthiest noblemen in Great Britain tramping the road, pack on

back, with a young nobody for his comrade, a total stranger, who might be a cutthroat, and was avowedly

next to a mendicant, charged him with quantities of interjectory matter, that he caught himself firing to the

foreign people on the highway. Hundreds of thousands a year, and tramping it like a pedlar, with a beggar for

his friend! He would have given something to have an English ear near him as he watched them rounding

IN those early days of Fortune's pregnant alternations of colour between the Red and the Black, exhibited

publicly, as it were a petroleum spring of the ebonyfiery lake below, Black Forest Baden was the

sprightliest of the antechambers of Hades. Thither in the ripeness of the year trooped the devotees of the

sable goddess to perform sacrifice; and annually among them the beautiful Livia, the Countess of Fleetwood;

for nowhere else had she sensation of the perfect repose which is rocked to a slumber by gales.

She was not of the creatures who are excited by an atmosphere of excitement; she took it as the nymph of the

stream her native wave, and swam on the flood with expansive languor, happy to have the master passions

about her; one or two of which her dainty hand caressed, fearless of a sting; the lady petted them as her

swans. It surprised her to a gentle contempt of men and women, that they should be ruffled either by love or

play. A withholding from the scene will naturally arouse disturbing wishes; but to be present lulls; for then

we live, we are in our element. And who could expect, what sane person can desire, perpetual good luck?

Fortune, the goddess, and young Love, too, are divine in their mutability: and Fortune would resemble a

humdrum housewife, Love a droning husband, if constancy were practised by them. Observe the staggering

and plunging of the blindfold wretch seeking to be persuaded of their faithfulness.

She could make for herself a quiet centre in the heart of the whirlwind, but the whirlwind was required. The

clustered lights at the corner of the vale under forest hills, the burst of music, the blazing windows of the

saloons of the Furies, and the gamblers advancing and retreating, with their totally opposite views of

consequences, and fashions of wearing or tearing the mask; and closer, the figures shifting up and down the

promenade, known and unknown faces, and the histories half known, half woven, weaving fast, which flew

their threads to provoke speculation; pleasantly embraced and diverted the cool blooded lady surrounded by

her courtiers, who could upon occasion supply the luminous clue or anecdote. She had an intuitive liveliness

to detect interchanges of eyes, the shuttle of intrigue; the mild hypocrisy, the clever audacity, the suspicion

confirmed, the complication threatening to become resonant and terrible; and the old crossing the young and

the young outwitting the old, wiles of fair traitors and dark, knaves of all suits of the pack. A more intimate

acquaintance with their lineaments inspired a regard for them, such as poets may feign the throned high moon

The simple fools, performing in character, were a neutral people, grotesques and arabesques wreathed about

the margins of the scene. Venus or Fortune smote them to a relievo distinguishing one from another. Here,

however, as elsewhere, the core of interest was with the serious population, the lovers and the players in

earnest, who stood round the furnace and pitched themselves into it, not always under a miscalculation of

their chances of emerging transfigured instead of serving for fuel. These, the tragical children of folly, were

astute: they played with lightning, and they knew the conditions of the game; victories were to be had.

The ulterior conditions of the game, the price paid for a victory, they thought little of: for they were feverish

worshippers of the phantasmal deity called the Present; a god reigning over the Past, appreciable only in the

Future; whose whiff of actual being is composed of the embryo idea of the union of these two periods. Still

he is occasionally a benevolent god to the appetites; which have but to be continuous to establish him in

permanence; and as nothing in us more readily supposes perpetuity than the appetite rushing to destroy itself,

the rational nature of the most universal worship on earth is perceived at once.

Now the price paid for a victory is this: that having been favoured in a single instance by the spouse of the

aforesaid eminent divinitythe Black Goddess of the golden fringesmen believe in her forever after,

behold her everywhere, they belong to her. Their faith as to sowing and reaping has gone; and so has their

capacity to see the actual as it is; she has the power to attach them to her skirts the more by rewarding their

impassioned devotion with cuffs and scorns. They have ceased to have a first notion upon anything without a

But I am reminded by the convulsions of Dame Gossip, that the wisdom of our ancestors makes it a mere

hammering of commonplace to insist on such reflections. Many of them, indeed, took the union of the Black

Goddess and the Rosy Present for the composition of the very ArchFiend. Some had a shot at the strange

conjecture, figuring her as tired of men in the end and challenging him belowequally tired of his easy

conquests of men since the glorious old times of the duelling saints. By virtue of his one incorrigible

weakness, which we know him to have as long as we have it ourselves: viz., the belief in her existence, she is

Upon this point the experience of Captain Abrane has a value. Livia was a follower of the Red and Black and

the rounding ball in the person of the giant captain, through whom she received her succession of sweetly

teasing thrills and shocks, as one of the adventurous company they formed together. The place was known to

him as the fair Philistine to another muscular hero; he had been shorn there before, and sent forth tottering,

treating the friends he met as pillars to fall with him; and when the operation was done thoroughly, he

pronounced himself refreshed by it, like a more sensible Samson, the cooler for his clipping. Then it was that

he relapsed undistractedly upon processes of his mind: and he often said he thought Fortune would beat the

Her power is shown in the moving of her solicitors to think, instantly after they have made their cast, that the

reverse of it was what they intended. It comes as though she had withdrawn the bandage from her forehead

and dropped a leaden glance on them, like a great dame angry to have her signal misinterpreted. Well, then,

distinguished by the goddess in such a manner, we have it proved to us how she wished to favour: for the

reverse wins, and we who are pinched blame not her cruelty but our blind folly. This is true worship.

Henceforth the pain of her nip is mingled with the dream of her kiss: between the positive and the imagined

of her we remain confused until the purse is an empty body on a gallows, honour too, perhaps.

Captain Abrane was one of the Countess Livia's numerous courtiers on the border of the promenade under the

lighted saloons. A colossus inactive, he had little to say among the chattering circle; for when seated, cards

were wanted to animate him: and he looked entirely out of place and unfitted, like a great vessel's

Abrane quoted promptly a line of nursery song: "How shall he cut it without e'er a knife?"

Yesterday their bank presented matronly proportions. But an importuned goddess reduces the most

Livia turned to a French gentleman of her court, M. de St. Ombre, and pursued a conversation. He was a

stately cavalier, of the Gallicized Frankish outlines, ready, but grave in his bearing, grave in his delivery,

His profound internal question relating to this unEnglish beauty of the British Isles:had she no passion in

As it might be necessary to lean on the little man for weapons of war, supposing Lord Fleetwood delayed his

arrival yet another day, Livia was indulgent. She assisted him to think that he spoke the foreign tongue.

Mention of Lord Fleetwood set Sir Meeson harping again on his alarms, in consideration of the vagabond

"You forget that Russett has gypsy in him: Welsh! it's about the same," said Livia. "He can take excellent

Sir Meeson Corby produced an aspect of the word "if," so perkily, that the dejected Captain Abrane laughed

outright and gave him double reason to fret for Lord Fleetwood's arrival, by saying: "If he hangs off much

Our two pedestrians out of Salzburg were standing up in the night of cloud and pines above the glittering

pool, having made their way along the path from the hill anciently dedicated to the god Mercury; and at the

moment when Sir Meeson put forth his frilled wrists to say: "If you had seen his handsthe creature

Fleetwood trotted off alone with!you'd be a bit anxious too"; the young lord called his comrade to gaze

underneath them: "There they are, hard at it, at their play! it's the word used for the filthiest gutter

They had come to know something of one another's humours; which are taken by young men for their

characters; and should the humours please, they are friends, until further humours develop, trying these

nascent conservatives hard to suit them to their moods as well as the accustomed. Lord Fleetwood had

discovered in his companion, besides the spirit of independence and the powers of thought impressed on him

by Woodseer's precocious flashes, a broad playfulness, that trenched on buffoonery; it astonished, amused,

and relieved him, loosening the spell of reverence cast over him by one who could so wonderfully illumine

his brain. Prone to admire and bend the knee where he admired, he chafed at subjection, unless he had the

particular spell constantly renewed. A tone in him once or twice of late, different from the comrade's, had

Susceptible, however, of the extreme contrast between the gamblers below and Nature's lover beside him,

"I shall never forget the walk we've had. I have to thank you for the noblest of pleasures. You've taught

mewell, a thousand things; the things money can't buy. What mornings they were! And the deadtired

nights! Under the rock and up to see the snowy peak pink in a gap of thick mist. You were right: it made a

crimsoning colour shine like a new idea. Up in those mountains one walks with the divinities, you said. It's

perfectly true. I shall remember I did. I have a treasure for life! Now I understand where you get your ideas.

The life we lead down there is hoggish. You have chosen the right. You're right, over and over again, when

you say, the dirty sweaters are nearer the angels for cleanliness than my Lord and Lady Sybarite out of a bath,

in chemical scents. A man who thinks, loathes their High Society. I went through Juvenal at college. But

youto be sure, you add examplemake me feel the contempt of it more. I am everlastingly indebted to

Now this was pleasant in Woodseer's ears. inasmuch as it established the young nobleman as the pupil of his

"Set your mind on the beauty, and there'll be no room for comparisons. Most of them are unjust, precious few

instructive. In this case, they spoil both pictures: and that scene down there rather hooks me; though I prefer

"I did: the beautiful Gorgon, haggard Venusif she is to be a girl!" Fleetwood rejoined. "She looked burnt

"One of the admirably damned," said Woodseer, and he murmured with enjoyment: "Between the

His comrade fell in with the pictured idea: "You hit it:not what you called the `sublimely milky,' and not

squalid as you'll see the faces of the gambling women at the tables below. Oblige memay I beg?don't

clap names on the mountains we've seen. It stamps guidebook on them, English tourist, horrors. We'll

moralize over the crowds at the tables down there. On the whole, it's a fairish game: you know the odds

against you, as you don't on the Turf or the Bourse. Have your fling; but don't get bitten. There's a virus. I'm

Hereupon Woodseer, wishing to have his individuality recognized in the universality it consented to,

remarked on an exchequer that could not afford to lose, and a disposition free of the craving to win.

These were, no doubt, good reasons for abstaining, and they were grand morality. They were, at the same

time, customary phrases of the unfleshed in folly. They struck Fleetwood with a curious reminder of the

puking inexperienced, whom he had seen subsequently plunge suicidally. He had a sharp vision of the

attractive forces of the game; and his elemental nature exulted in siding with the stronger against a pretender

to the superhuman. For Woodseer had spoken a trifle loftily, as quite above temptation. To see a forewarned

philosopher lured to try the swim on those tides, pulled along the current, and caught by the undertug of the

"We'll drop down on them, find our hotel, and have a look at what they're doing," he said, and stepped.

Woodseer would gladly have remained. The starlit black ridges about him and the dragon's mouth yawning

underneath were an opposition of spiritual and mundane; innocent, noxious; exciting to the youthful

philosopher. He had to follow, and so rapidly in the darkness that he stumbled and fell on an arm; a small

Bedchambers awaited them at the hotel, none of the party: and Fleetwood's manservant was absent:

"Gambling, the rascal!" he said. Woodseer heard the first note of the place in that.

His leader was washed, neatly dressed, and knocking at his door very soon, impatient to be off, and he flung a

promise of "supper presently" to one whose modest purse had fallen into a debate with this lordly hostelry,

counting that a supper and a night there would do for it. They hurried on to the line of promenaders, a river of

crosscurrents by the side of seated groups; and the willowy swish of silken dresses, feminine perfumery,

Fleetwood scanned the groups. He had seen enough in a moment and his face blackened. A darting waiter

He said to Woodseer, savagely, as it sounded: "You shall have something to joint your bones!" What cause of

wrath he had was past a guess: a wolf at his vitals bit him, hardening his handsome features.

The waiter darted back, bearing a tray and tall glasses filled each with piled particoloured liqueurs, on the

top of which an eggyolk swam. Fleetwood gave example. Swallowing your egg, the fieryvelvet triune

behind slips after it, in an easy milky way, like a princess's train on a statemarch, and you are completely

transformed, very agreeably; you have become a merry demon. "Well, yes, it's next to magic," he replied to

Woodseer's astonished snigger after the draught, and explained, that it was a famous Viennese

fourofthemorning panacea, the revellers' electrical restorer. "Now you can hold on for an hour or two,

He found himself bowing to a most heavenly lady, composed of day and night in her colouring, but more of

night, where the western edge has become a pale steel blade. Men were around her, forming a semicircle.

The world of men and women was mere timber and leafage to this flower of her sex, glory of her kind. How

he behaved in her presence, he knew not; he was beyond selfcriticism or conscious reflection; simply the

engine of the commixed three liqueurs, with parlous fine thoughts, and a sense of steaming into the infinite.

To leave her was to have her as a moon in the heavens and to think of her creatively. A swarm of images

rushed about her and away, took lustre and shade. She was a miracle of greyness, her eyes translucently grey,

a darkhaired queen of the twilights; and his heart sprang into his brain to picture the novel beauty; language

became a flushed Bacchanal in a ring of dancing similes. Lying beside a bank of silvery cinquefoil against a

clear evening sky, where the planet Venus is a point of new and warmer light, one has the vision of her. Or

something of Persephone rising to greet her mother, when our beam of day first melts through her as she

kneels to gather an early bud of the year, would be near it. Or there is a lake in midforest, that curls part in

He strained to the earthly and the skyey likenesses of his marvel of human beauty because they bestowed her

The gold glittered, and it heaped or it vanished. Contemptuous of money, beyond the limited sum for his

needs, he gazed; imagination was blunted in him to the hot drama of the business. Moreover his mind was

engaged in insisting that the Evening Star is not to be called Venus, because of certain stories; and he was

vowed to defend his lady from any allusion to them. This occupied him. By degrees, the visible asserted its

authority; his look on the coin fell to speculating. Oddly, too, he was often right;the money, staked on the

other side, would have won. He considered it rather a plain calculation than a guess.

Philosophy withdrew him from his temporary interest in the tricks of a circling white marble ball. The

chuckfarthing of street urchins has quite as much dignity. He compared the creatures dabbling over the

board to summer flies on butcher's meat, periodically scared by a cloth. More in the abstract, they were

snatching at a snapdragon bowl. It struck him, that the gamblers had thronged on an invitation to drink the

round of seedtime and harvest in a gulp. Again they were desperate gleaners, hopping, skipping, bleeding,

amid a whizz of scythe blades, for small wisps of booty. Nor was it long before the presidency of an ancient

hoary GoatSatan might be perceived, with skeweyes and puckermouth, nursing a hoof on a knee.

Our medi�val Enemy sat symbolical in his deformities, as in old Italian and Dutch thickline engravings of

him. He rolled a ball for souls, excited like kittens, to catch it, and tumbling into the dozens of vacant pits. So

it seemed to Woodseer, whose perceptions were discoloured by hereditary antagonism. Had he preserved his

philosopher's eye, he would have known that the Hoofed One is too wily to show himself, owing to his

ugliness. The Black Goddess and no other presides at her own game. She (it is good for us to know it) is the

Power who challenges the individual, it is he who spreads the net for the mass. She liquefies the brain of

man; he petrifies or ossifies the heart. From her comes craziness, from him perversity: a more provocative

and, on the whole, more contagious disease. The gambler does not seek to lead his fellows into perdition; the

snared of the Demon have pleasure in the act. Hence our naturally interested forecasts of the contest between

them: for if he is beaten, as all must be at the close of an extended game with her, we have only to harden the

Woodseer said to Fleetwood: "That ball has a look of a nymph running round and round till she changes to

"We'll have a run with her," said Fleetwood, keener for business than for metaphors at the moment.

He received gold for a banknote. Captain Abrane hurriedly begged a loan. Both of them threw. Neither of

them threw on the six numbers Woodseer would have selected, and they lost. He stated that the number of 17

had won before. Abrane tried the transversal enclosing this favoured number. "Of course!" he cried, with foul

resignation and a hostile glare: the ball had seated itself and was grinning at him from the lowest of the stalls.

Fleetwood quitted the tablenumbers to throw on Pair; he won, won again, pushed his luck and lost, dragging

Abrane with him. The giant varied his tone of acquiescence in Fortune's whims: "Of course! I've only to

"If the luck has gone three times, the chances . . ." Woodseer was rather inquiring than pronouncing. Lord

Fleetwood cut him short. "The chances are equally the contrary!" and discomposed his argumentative mind.

As argument in such a place was impossible, he had a wild idea of example"just to see"; and though he

smiled, his brain was liquefying. Upon a calculation of the chances, merely for the humour of it, he laid a

silver piece on the first six, which had been neglected. They were now blest. He laid his winnings on the

number 17. Who would have expected it? why, the player, surely! Woodseer comported himself like a

veteran: he had proved that you can calculate the chances. Instead of turning in triumph to Lord Fleetwood,

he laid gold pieces to hug the number 17, and ten in the centre. And it is the truth, he hoped then to lose and

have done with itafter proving his ease. The ball whirled, kicked, tried for seat in two, in three points, and

entered 17. The usual temporary wonderment flew round the table; and this number was courted in dread,

Success was a small matter to Gower Woodseer. He displayed his contempt of fortune by letting his heap of

banknotes lie on Impair, and he won. Abrane bade him say "Maximum" in a furious whisper. He did so, as

one at home with the word; and winning repeatedly, observed to Fleetwood: "Now I can understand what

historians mean, in telling us of heroes rushing into the fray and vainly seeking death. I always thought death

Fleetwood scrutinized the cast of his features and the touch of his fingers on the crispy paper.

"Come to another of these `green fields,'" he returned briefly. "The game here is child's play."

Urging Virgin Luck not to quit his initiatory table, the captain reluctantly went at their heels. Shortly before

the tables were clad in mantles for the night, he reported to Livia one of the great cases of Virgin Luck;

described it, from the silver piece to the big heap of notes, and drew on his envy of the fellow to sketch the

indomitable coolness shown in following or in quitting a run. "That fellow it is, Fleetwood's tagrag; holds

his head like a streetfiddler; Woodler or some name. But there's nothing to be done if we don't cultivate him.

He must have pocketed a good three thousand and more. They had a quarrel about calculations of chances,

and Fleet ran the V up his forehead at a piece of impudence. Fellow says some high flying stuff; Fleet

brightens like a Sunday chimneysweep. If I believed in Black Arts, upon my word!"

"Be careful how you address this gentleman," she counselled Abrane. "The name is not Woodler, I know. It

Livia's fairest smile received them. She heard the captain accosting the child of luck as Mr. Woodler, and she

"You are released at the end of the lamps. You redeem your ring, Russett, and I will restore it. I have to tell

"The place where she is to be seen is not generally undervalued by men. It is not her fault that she is absent.

The admiral was persuaded to go and attend those cavalry man*uvres with the Grand Duke, to whom he had

been civil when in command of the Mediterranean squadron. You know, the admiral believes he has

militaryI mean soldierlygenius; and the delusion may have given him wholesome exercise and helped

him to forget his gout. So far, Henrietta will have been satisfied. She cannot have found much amusement

among dusty troopers or at that court at Carlsruhe. Our French milliner there has helped in retarding

herquite against her will. She has had to choose a balldress for the raw mountaingirl they have with

them, and get her fitted, and it's a task! Why take her to the ball? But the admiral's infatuated with this girl,

and won't hear of her exclusionbecause, he says, she understands a field of battle; and the Ducal party have

taken to her. Ah, Russett, you should not have flown! No harm, only Henrietta does require a trifle of

"A respectable love matcheh? Good Lord!You'll be civil to my friend. You have struck him to the dust.

"Cleared out, I suppose? Abrane is a funnel for pouring into that Bank. Have your fun as you like it! I shall

get supplies to morrow. By the way, you have that boy Cressett here. What are you doing with him?"

"He was at the table beside me, bursting to have a fling; and my friend Mr. Woodseer said, it was `Adonis

Prompt as bugle to the breath, Livia proposed to bet him fifty pounds that she would keep young Cressett

Fleetwood moved and bowed. Sir Meeson Corby simulated a petrifaction of his frame at seeing the Countess

of Fleetwood actually partly bent with her gracious acknowledgment of the tramp's gawky homage.

A CLOCK sounded one of the later morning hours of the night as Gower Woodseer stood at his hotel door,

having left Fleetwood with a band of revellers. The night was now clear. Stars were low over the ridge of

pines, dropped to a league of our strange world to record the doings. Beneath this roof lay the starry She. He

was elected to lie beneath it also: and he beheld his heavenly lady floating on the lull of soft white cloud

among her sister spheres. After the way of imaginative young men, he had her features more accurately now

she was hidden, and he idealized her more. He could escape for a time from his coil of similes and paint for

himself the irids of her large, long, grey eyes darkly rimmed; purest watergrey, lucid within the ring,

beneath an arch of lashes. He had them fast; but then he fell to contemplating their exceeding rareness; and

the mystery of the divinely grey swung a kindled fancy to the flight with some queenwitch of woods, of

whom a youth may dream under the spell of twilights, East or West, among forest branches.

She had these marvellous eyes and the glamour for men. She had not yet met a man with the poetical twist in

the brain to prize her elementally. All admitted the glamour; none of her courtiers were able to name it, even

the poetical head giving it a name did not think of the witch in her looks as a witch in her deeds, a modern

daughter of the medi�val. To her giant squire the eyes of the lady were queer: they were unlit glass lamps to

her French suppliant; and to the others, they were attractively uncommon; the charm for them being in her

fine outlines, her stature, carriage of her person, and unalterable composure; particularly her latent daring.

She had the effect on the general mind of a lofty cragcastle with a history. There was a whiff of gunpowder

Woodseer sat for a certain time over his notebook. He closed it with a thrilling conceit of the right thing

written down; such as entomologists feel when they have pinned the rare insect. But what is butterfly or

beetle compared with the chiselled sentences carved out of air to constitute us part owner of the breathing

image and spirit of an adored fair woman? We repeat them, and the act of repeating them makes her close on

Then, though she is not ever to be absolutely ours (and it is an impoverishing desire that she should be), we

have beaten out the golden sentencethe essential she and we in one. But is it so precious after all? A

The author dashed at his book, examined, approved, keenly enjoyed, and he murderously scratched the

adjective. She stood better without it, as a bright planet star issuing from clouds, which are perhaps an

adornment to our hackneyed moon. This done, he restored the book to his coat's breastpocket, smiling or

sneering at the rolls of banknotes there, disdaining to count them. They stuffed an inner waistcoat pocket

and his trousers also. They at any rate warranted that we can form a calculation of the chances, let Lord

Woodseer had caught a glimpse of the elbowpoint of his coat when flinging it back to the chair. There was

distinctly abrasion. Philosophers laugh at such things. But they must be the very ancient pallium

philosophers, ensconced in tubs, if they pretend to merriment over the spectacle of nether garments gapped at

the spot where man is most vulnerable. He got loose from them and held them up to the candle, and the rays

were admitted, neither winking nor peeping. Serviceable old clothes, no doubt. Time had not dealt them the

final kick before they scored a good record. They dragged him, nevertheless, to a sort of confession of some

weakness, that he could not analyse for the swirl of emotional thoughts in the way; and they had him to the

ground. An eagle of the poetic becomes a mere squat toad through one of these petty material strokes. Where

then is Philosophy? But who can be philosopher and the fervent admirer of a glorious lady? Ask again, who

in that frowzy garb can presume to think of her or stand within fifty miles of her orbit?

A dreary two hours brought round daylight. Woodseer quitted his restless bed and entered the abjured

habiliments, chivalrous enough to keep from denouncing them until he could cast the bad skin they now were

to his uneasy sensations. He remembered having stumbled and fallen on the slope of the hill into this vale,

and probably then the mischief had occurred: though a brush would have been sufficient, the slightest

collision. Only, it was odd that the accident should have come to pass just previous to his introduction. How

long antecedent was it? He belaboured his memory to reckon how long it was from the moment of the fall to

His window looked down on the hotel stableyard. A coach house door was open. Odd or notand it

certainly looked like fatethat he should be bowing to his lady so shortly after the mishap expelling him, he

had to leave the place. A groom in the yard was hailed, and cheerily informed him he could be driven to

Carlsruhe as soon as the coachman had finished his breakfast. At Carlsruhe a decent refitting might be

obtained, and he could return from exile that very day, thanks to the praiseworthy early hours of brave old

He had swallowed a cup of coffee with a roll of stale bread, in the best of moods, and entered his carriage; he

was calling the order to start when a shout surprised his ear: "The fiddler bolts!"

Captain Abrane's was the voice. About twenty paces behind, Abrane, Fleetwood, and one whom they called

Chummy Potts, were wildly waving arms. Woodseer could hear the captain's lowered roar: "Race you,

Chummy, couple of louis, catch him first!" The two came pelting up to the carriage abreast.

They were belated revellers, and had been carelessly strolling under the pinky cloudlets bedward, after a

prolonged carousal with the sons and daughters of hilarious nations, until the apparition of Virgin Luck on

"Here, come, no, by Jove, you, Mr. Woodsir! won't do, not a bit! can't let you go," cried Abrane, as he puffed.

"What! cut and run and leave us, post winningsbankersknock your luck on the head! What a fellow!

Can't let you. Countess never forgive us. You promisedswore itplay for her. Struck all aheap to hear of

your play! You've got the trick. Her purse for you in my pocket. Never a fellow played like you. Cool as a

cook over a gridiron! Comme un phare! St. Ombre saysthat Frenchman. You astonished the Frenchman!

"Hands off!" Woodseer bellowed, feeling himself a leaky vessel in dock, his infirmities in danger of

"Out you come," said the giant, and laughed at the fun to his friends, who were entirely harmonious when not

violently dissenting, as is the way with Night's rollickers before their beds have reconciled them to the

Woodseer would have had to come and was coming; he happened to say: "Don't knock my pipe out of my

"Takes a carriage on the top of the morning to smoke and think! Hark at that!" Abrane sang out. "Oh, come

along quietly, you fellow, there's a good fellow! It concerns us all, every man Jack; we're all bound up in your

fortunes. Fellow with luck like yours can't pretend to behave independently. Out of reason!"

Woodseer replied: "Very well, I do; there, I give my word. Hang it! now I know what they mean by `anything

Potts was hustled and precipitated into the carriage by the pair, with whom he partook this last glimmer of

their night's humorous extravagances, for he well an easy creature. The carriage drove off.

He remarked to Woodseer: "With your permission," concerning the seat he took, and that "a draught of

morning air would do him good." Then he laughed politely, exchanged wavy distant farewells with his

comrades, touched a breastpocket for his case of cigars, pulled forth one, obtained "the loan of a light," blew

clouds and fell into the anticipated composure, quite understanding the case and his office.

Both agreed as to the fine morning it was. Woodseer briefly assented to his keeper's reiterated encomium on

the morning, justified on oath. A fine morning, indeed. "Damned if I think I ever saw so fine a morning!"

Potts cried. He had no other subject of conversation with this hybrid: and being equally disposed for hot

discourse or for sleep, the deprivation of the one and the other forced him to seek amusement in his famous

reading of character; which was profound among the biped equine, jockeys, turfmen, sharpers, pugilists,

demireps. He fronted Woodseer with square shoulders and wide knees, an elbow on one, a fist on the other,

engaged in what he termed the "prodding of his eel," or "nicking of his man," a method of getting straight at

the riddle of the fellow by the test of how long he could endure a flat mute stare and return look for look

unblinking. The act of smoking fortifies and partly covers the insolence. But if by chance an equable, not too

narrowly focussed, counterstare is met, our impertinent inquisitor may resemble the fisherman pulled into

deep waters by his fish. Woodseer perused his man, he was not attempting to fathom him: he had besides

other stuff in his head. Potts had naught, and the poor particle he was wriggled under detection.

"Tobacco before breakfast!" he said disgustedly, tossing his cigar to the road. "Your pipe holds on. Bad thing,

I can tell you, that smoking on an empty stomach. No trainer'd allow it, not for a whole fee or double. Kills

your wind. Let me ask you, my good sir, are you going to turn? We've sat a fairish stretch. I begin to want my

He heard with stupefaction, that he could alight on the spot, if he pleased, otherwise he would be driven into

Carlsruhe. And now they had a lingual encounter, hot against cool; but the eyes of Chummy Potts having

been beaten, his arguments and reproaches were not backed by the powerful looks which are an essential part

of such eloquence as he commanded. They fled from his enemy's currishly, even while he was launching

epithets. His pathetic position subjected him to beg that Woodseer would direct the driver to turn, for he had

no knowledge of "their German lingo." And said he: "You've nothing to laugh at, that I can see. I'm at your

mercy, you brute; caught in a trap. I never walk;and the sun fit to fry a mackerel along that road! I

apologise for abusing you; I can't do more. You're an infernally clever playerthere! And, upon my soul, I

could drink ditchwater! But if you're going in for transactions at Carlsruhe, mark my words, your luck's gone.

Woodseer happened to be smiling over the excellent reason for not turning back which inflicted the

wofulness. He was not without sympathy for a thirsty wretch, and guessing, at the sight of an avenue of limes

to the left of the road, that a wayside inn was below, he said: "You can have coffee or beer in two minutes,"

The sight of a greyjacketed, greencollared sportsman, dog at heel, crossing the flat land to the hills of the

forest, pricked him enviously, and caused him to ask what change had come upon him, that he should be

hurrying to a town for a change of clothes. Just as Potts was about to jump out, a carriage, with a second

behind it, left the inn door. He rubbed a hand on his unshaven chin, tried a glance at his shirtfront, and

remarking: "It won't be any one who knows me," stood to let the carriages pass. In the first were a young lady

and a gentleman: the lady brilliantly fair, an effect of auburn hair and complexion, despite the signs of a

storm that had swept them and had not cleared from her eyelids. Apparently her maid, a damsel sitting

straight up, occupied the carriage following; and this freshfaced young person twice quickly and bluntly

bent her head as she was driven by. Potts was unacquainted with the maid. But he knew the lady well, or well

enough for her inattention to be the bigger puzzle. She gazed at the Black Forest hills in the steadiest manner,

with eyes betraying more than they saw; which solved part of the puzzle, of course. Her reasons for declining

to see him were exposed by the presence of the gentleman beside her. At the same time, in so highly bred a

girl, a defenceless exposure was unaccountable. Half a nod and the shade of a smile would have been the

proper course; and her going along on the road to the valley seemed to say it might easily have been taken;

Potts ranked Henrietta's beauty far above her cousin Livia's. He was therefore personally offended by her

disregard of him, and her bit of a scene with the fellow carrying her off did him injury on behalf of his friend

Fleetwood. He dismissed Woodseer curtly. Thirsting more to gossip than to drink, he took a moody draught

of beer at the inn, and by the aid of a conveyance, "hastily built of rotten planks to serve his needs, and drawn

by a horse of the old wars," as he reported on his arrival at Baden, reached that home of the maltreated

innocents twenty minutes before the countess and her party were to start for lunch up the Lichtenthal.

Naturally, he was abused for letting his bird fly: but as he was shaven, refreshed, and in clean linen, he could

pull his shirtcuffs and take seat at his breakfasttable with equanimity while Abrane denounced him.

"I'll bet you the fellow's luck has gone," said Potts. "He's no new hand and you don't think him so either,

Fleet. I've looked into the fellow's eye and seen a leery old badger at the bottom of it. Talks vile stuff.

However, perhaps I didn't drive out on that sweltering Carlsruhe road for nothing."

He screwed a look at the earl, who sent Abrane to carry a message and heard the story Potts had to tell.

"Henrietta Fakenham! no mistake about her; driving out from a pothouse; man beside her, military man;

might be a German. And, if you please, quite unacquainted with your humble servant, though we were as

close as you to me. Something went wrong in that pothouse. Red eyes. There had been a scene, one could

swear. Behind the lady another carriage, and her maid. Never saw the girl before, and sets to bowing and

smirking at me, as if I was the fellow of all others! Comical. I made sure they were bound for this place. They

"You have a bad habit of speaking to yourself," Fleetwood remarked, and left him. He suffered from the

rustics he had to deal with among his class, and it was not needed that he should thunder at them to make his

Livia swam in, asking: "What has come to Russett? He passed me in one of his black fits."

The tale of the Carlsruhe road was repeated by Potts. She reproved him. "How could you choose Russett for

such a report as that! The admiral was on the road behind. Henriettayou're sure it was she? German girls

have much the same colouring. The gentleman with her must have been one of the Court equerries. They

were driving to some ch�teau or battlefield the admiral wanted to inspect. Goodlooking man? Military

"Oh! the man! pretty fair, I dare say," Potts rejoined. "If it wasn't Henrietta Fakenham, I see with the back of

She conceived the news to be of sufficient importance for her to countermand the drive up the Lichtenthal,

and take the Carlsruhe road instead; for Henrietta was weak, and Chillon Kirby an archplotter, and pleader

too, one of the desperate lovers. He was outstaying his leave of absence already, she believed; he had to be in

England. If he feared to lose Henrietta, he would not hesitate to carry her off. Livia knew him, and knew the

NOTHING to rouse alarm was discovered at Carlsruhe. Livia's fair cousin was there with the redhaired

gaunt girl of the mountains; and it was frankly stated by Henrietta, that she had accompanied the girl a certain

distance along the Strasburg road, for her to see the last of her brother Chillon on his way to England. Livia

was not the woman to push inquiries. On that subject, she merely said, as soon as they were alone together:

"Yes, we passed Mr. Chumley Potts," was Henrietta's immediate answer; and her reference to him disarmed

They smiled at his name transiently, but in agreement: the tattlerspout of their set was a fatal person to

encounter, and each deemed the sudden apparition of him in the very early morning along the Carlsruhe road

"You place particular confidence in Russett's fidelity to his word, Rietteas you have been hearing yourself

called. You should be serious by this time. Russett won't bear much more. I counted on the night of the Ball

for the grand effect. You will extinguish every woman thereand if he is absent?"

"You are not in a position to be so charitable. You ought to know your position, and yourself too, a little

better than you do. How could you endure poverty? Chillon Kirby stands in his uniform, and all's told. He can

man*uvre, we know. He got the admiral away to take him to those reviews cleverly. But is he thinking of

your interests when he does it? He requires twenty years of active service to give you a roof to your head. I

hate such allusions. But look for a moment at your character: you must have ordinary luxuries and pleasures,

and if you were to find yourself grinding against common necessitiesimagine it! Russett is quite

manageable. He is, trust me! He is a gentleman; he has more ability than most young men: he can do

anything he sets his mind to do. He has his great estates and fortune all in his own hands. We call him

eccentric. He is only young, with a lot of power. Add, he's in love, and some one distracts him. Not love, do

you say?You look it. He worships. He has no chance given him to show himself at his best. Perhaps he is

"I should incline to make the bet, if I betted," said Henrietta. "His pride is in his word, and supposing he's in

"There's firmness in a man who has pride of that kind. You must let me take you back to Baden. I hold to

having you with me today. You must make an appearance there. The admiral will bring us his Miss Kirby

tomorrow, if he is bound to remain here tonight. There's no harm in his bachelor dinners. I suspect his

twinges of gout come of the prospect of affairs when he lands in England. Remember our bill with Madame

Cl�mence. There won't be the ghost of a banknote for me if Russett quits the field; we shall all be stranded."

"Consider, that he is now fancying a thousand things. We won't talk of the road to Paris."

Henrietta debated. "It's impossible to dislike her. Oh! she is wild! She knows absolutely nothing of the world.

She can do everything we can'tor don't dare to try. Men would like her. Papa's beginning to dote. He says

she would have made a first rate soldier. She fears blood as little as her morning cup of milk. One of the

orderlies fell rather badly from a frightened horse close by our carriage. She was out in a moment and had his

head on her lap, calling to papa to keep the carriage fast and block the way of the squadron, for the man's leg

was hurt. I really thought we were lost. At these man*uvres anything may happen, at any instant. Papa will

follow the horseartillery. You know his vanity to be a military quite as much as a naval commanderlike

the Greeks and Romans, he says. We took the bruised man into our carriage and drove him to camp,

"Carinthia! She's well fitted with her name. What with her name and her hair and her build and her singular

style of attire, one wonders at her coming into civilized parts. She's utterly unlike Chillon."

Henrietta reddened at the mention of one of her own thoughts in the contrasting of the pair.

It did not concern Livia to hear what these were. Back to Baden, with means to procure the pleasant shocks of

the galvanic battery there, was her thought; for she had a fear of the earl's having again departed in a huff at

The admiral consented that his daughter should go, as soon as he heard that Miss Kirby was to stay. He had

when a young man met her famous father; he vowed she was the Old Buccaneer young again in petticoats

and had made prize of an English man ofwar by storm; all the profit, however, being his. This he proved

with a courteous clasp of the girl and a show of the salute on her cheek, which he presumed to take at the

night's farewell. "She's my tonic," he proclaimed heartily. She seemed to Livia somewhat unstrung and

toneless. The separation from her brother in the morning might account for it. And a man of the admiral's age

could be excused if he exalted the girl. Senility, like infancy, is fond of plain outlines for the laying on of its

paints. The girl had rugged brows, a short nose, red hair; no young man would look at her twice. She was

utterly unlike Chillon! Kissing her hand to Henrietta from the steps of the hotel, the girl's face improved.

Livia's little squire, Sir Meeson Corby, ejaculated as they were driving down the main street, "Fleetwood's

tramp! There he goes. Now see, Miss Fakenham, the kind of object Lord Fleetwood picks up and calls

friend!calls that object friend! . . . But, what? He has been to a tailor and a barber!"

"Stop the coachman. Run, tell Mr. Woodseer I wish him to join us," Livia said, and Sir Meeson had to thank

his tramp for a second indignity. He protested, he simulated remonstrance, he had to go, really feeling a

The singularlooking person, whose necessities or sense of the decencies had, unknown to himself and to the

others, put them all in motion that day, swung round listening to the challenge to arms, as the puffy little

man's delivery of the countess's message sounded. He was respectably clad, he thought, in the relief of his

escape from the suit of clothes discarded, and he silently followed Sir Meeson's trot to the carriage. "Should

His dark lady's eyes were kindly overlooking, like the heavens. Her fair cousin, to whom he bowed,

awakened him to a perception of the spectacle causing the slight, quick arrest of her look, in an astonishment

not unlike the hiccup in speech, while her act of courtesy proceeded. At once he was conscious of the price he

paid for respectability, and saw the Teuton skin on the slim Cambrian, baggy at shoulders, baggy at seat,

pinched at the knees, short at the heels, showing outrageously every spot where he ought to have been bigger

or smaller. How accept or how reject the invitation to drive in such company to Baden!

"You're decided enough, sir, in your play, they tell me," the vindictive little baronet commented on his

hesitation, and Woodseer sprang to the proffered vacant place. But he had to speak of his fly waiting for him

"Best hotel in the town!" Sir Meeson exclaimed pointedly to Henrietta, reading her constraint with this

"Be so good as to step down and tell the admiral he is to bring Madame Cl�mence in his carriage tomorrow;

and on your way, you will dismiss Mr. Woodseer's fly," Livia mildly addressed her squire. He stared: again

he had to go, muttering: "That nondescript's footman!" and his mischance in being checked and crossed and

humiliated perpetually by a dirtyfisted vagabond impostor astounded him. He sent the flyman to the carriage

Admiral Fakenham and Carinthia descended. Sir Meeson heard her cry out: "It is you!" and up stood the

pretentious lout in the German sack, affecting the graces of a born gentleman fresh from Paris,bowing,

smirking, excusing himself for something; and he jumped down to the young lady, he talked intimately with

her, with a joker's air; he roused the admiral to an exchange of jokes, and the countess and Miss Fakenham

more than smiled; evidently at his remarks, unobservant of the preposterous figure he cut. Sir Meeson Corby

had intimations of the disintegration of his country if a patent tramp burlesquing in those clothes could he

permitted to amuse English ladies of high station, quite at home with them. Among the signs of England's

downfall, this was decidedly one. What to think of the admiral's favourite when, having his arm paternally on

her shoulder, she gave the tramp her hand at parting, and then blushed! All that the ladies had to say about it

Carinthia had given Woodseer her hand and reddened under the recollection of Chillon's words to her as they

mounted the rise of the narrow vale, after leaving the lame gentleman to his tobacco on the grass below the

rocks. Her brother might have counselled her wisely and was to be obeyed. Only, the great pleasure in seeing

the gentleman again inspired gratitude: he brought the scene to her; and it was alive, it chatted and it

beckoned; it neighboured her home; she had passed it on her walk away from her home; the gentleman was

her link to the mountain paths; he was just outside an association with her father and mother. At least, her

thinking of them led to him, he to them. Now she had lost Chillon, no one was near to do so much. Besides,

Chillon loved Henrietta; he was her own. His heart was hers and his mind his country's. This gentleman loved

the mountains; the sight of him breathed mountain air. To see him next day was her anticipation: for it would

be at the skirts of hilly forest land, where pinetrees are a noble family, different from the dusty firs of the

Baden was her first peep at the edges of the world since she had grown to be a young woman. She had but a

faint idea of the significance of gambling. The brilliant lights, the band music, the sitting groups and

company of promenaders were novelties; the Ball of the ensuing night at the Schloss would be a wonder, she

acknowledged in response to Henrietta, who was trying to understand her; and she admired her balldress,

she said, looking unintelligently when she heard that she would be guilty of slaying numbers of gentlemen

before the night was over. Madame Cl�mence thought her chances in that respect as good as any other young

lady's, if only she could be got to feel interested. But at a word of the pine forest, and saying she intended to

climb the hills early with the light in the morning, a pointed eagerness flushed Carinthia, the cold engraving

She was out with the earliest light. Yesterday's parting between Chillon and Henrietta had taught her to know

some little about love; and if her voice had been heeded by Chillon's beloved, it would not have been a

parting. Her only success was to bring a flood of tears from Henrietta. The tears at least assured her that her

brother's beautiful girl had no love for the other one,the young nobleman of the great wealth, who was to

be at the Ball, and had "gone flying," Admiral Fakenham shrugged to say; for Lord Fleetwood was nowhere

The much talk of him on the promenade overnight fetched his name to her thoughts; he scarcely touched a

mind that her father filled when she was once again breathing early morning air among the stems of climbing

pines, broken alleys of the lowsweeping spruce branches and the bare, straight shafts carrying their heads

high in the march upward. Her old father was archpriest of such forest land, always recoverable to her there.

The suggestion of mountains was enough to make her mind play, and her old father and she were aware of

one another without conversing in speech. He pointed at things to observe; he shared her satisfied hunger for

the solitudes of the dumb and growing and wild sweetsmelling. He would not let a sorrowful thought

backward or an apprehensive idea forward disturb the scene. A halfuprooted pinetree stem propped mid

fall by standing comrades, and the downy drop to ground and muted scurry up the bark of longbrush

squirrels, cocktail on the wary watch, were noticed by him as well as by her; even the rotting timber drift,

bark and cones on the yellow pine needles, and the tortuous dwarf chestnut pushing level out, with a strain of

the head up, from a crevice of mossed rock, among ivy and ferns; he saw what his girl saw. Power of heart

She climbed to the rockslabs above. This was too easily done. The poor bit of effort excited her frame to

desire a spice of danger, her walk was towering in the physical contempt of a mountain girl for petty lowland

obstructions. And it was just then, by the chance of thingsby the direction of events, as Dame Gossip

believes it to bewhile colour, expression, and her proud stature marked her from her sex, that a gentleman,

who was no other than Lord Fleetwood, passed Carinthia, coming out of the deeper pine forest.

Some distance on, round a bend of the path, she was tempted to adventure by a projected forked head of a

sturdy, blunted and twisted little rockfostered forest tree pushing horizontally for growth about thirty feet

above the lower ground. She looked on it, and took a step down to the stem soon after. Fleetwood had turned

and followed, merely for the final curious peep at an unexpected vision; he had noticed the singular shoot of

thick timber from the rock, and the form of the gooseneck it rose to, the sprout of branches off the bill in the

shape of a crest. And now a shameful spasm of terror seized him at sight of a girl doing what he would have

dreaded to attempt. She footed coolly, wellbalanced, upright. She seated herself.

And there let her be. She was a German girl, apparently. She had an air of breeding, something more than

breeding. German families of the nobles give out, here and there, as the Great War showed examples of,

intrepid young women, who have the sharp lines of character to render them independent of the graces. But,

if a young woman out alone in the woods was hardly to be counted among the wellborn, she held rank

above them. Her face and bearing might really be taken to symbolize the forest life. She was as individual a

representative as the Tragic and Comic masks, and should be got to stand between them for sign of the

Not comparable to Henrietta in feminine beauty, she was on an upper plateau, where questions as to beauty

are answered by other than the shallow aspect of a girl. But would Henrietta eclipse her if they were side by

side? Fleetwood recalled the strange girl's face. There was in it a savage poignancy in serenity unexampled

among womenor modern women. One might imagine an apotheosis of a militant young princess of Goths

or Vandals, the glow of blessedness awakening her martial ardours through the languor of the

grave:Woodseer would comprehend and hit on the exact image to portray her in a moment, Fleetwood

He walked hurriedly back to the stunted rock tree. The damsel had vanished. He glanced below. She had not

fallen. He longed to tell Woodseer he had seen a sort of Carinthiaa sister, cousin, one of the family. A

single glimpse of her had raised him out of his grovelling perturbations, cooled and strengthened him, more

than diverting the course of the poison Henrietta infused, and to which it disgraced him to be so subject. He

took love unmanfully; the passion struck at his weakness; in wrath at the humiliation, if only to revenge

himself for that, he could be fiendish; he knew it, and loathed the desired fair creature who caused and

exposed to him these cracks in his nature, whence there came a brimstone stench of the infernal pits. And he

was made for better. Of this he was right well assured. Superior to station and to wealth, to all mundane

advantages, he was the puppet of a florid puppet girl; and he had slept at the small inn of a village hard by,

because it was intolerable to him to see the face that had been tearful over her lover's departure, and hear her

praises of the man she trusted to keep his word, however grievously she wounded him.

He was the prisoner of his word;rather like the donkeys known as married men: rather more honourable

than most of them. He had to be present at the ball at the Schloss and behold his loathed Henrietta, suffer

torture of chains to the rack, by reason of his having promised the bitter coquette he would be there. So

hellish did the misery seem to him, that he was relieved by the prospect of lying a whole day long in

loneliness with the sunshine of the woods, occasionally conjuring up the antidote face of the woodsprite

before he was to undergo it. But, as he was not by nature a dreamer, only dreamed of the luxury of being one,

he soon looked back with loathing on a notion of relief to come from the state of ruminating animal, and

jumped up and shook off another of men's delusionsthat they can, if they have the heart to suffer pain,

deaden it with any semipoetical devices, similar to those which Rufus Abrane's "fiddler fellow" practised

and was able to carry out because he had no blood. The spite of a present entire opposition to Woodseer's

professed views made him exult in the thought, that the mouther of sentences was likely to be at work

stultifying them and himself in the halls there below during the day. An imp of mischief offered consolatory

sport in those halls of the Black Goddess; already he regarded his recent subservience to the conceited and

tripped peripatetic philosopher as among the ignominies he had cast away on his road to a general contempt;

which is the position of a supreme elevation for particularly sensitive young men.

Pleasure in the scenery had gone, and the woodsprite was a flitted vapour; he longed to be below there,

observing Abrane and Potts and the philosopher confounded, and the legible placidity of Countess Livia.

Nevertheless, he hung aloft, feeding where he could, impatient of the solitudes, till night, when, according to

Half the fun was over: but the tale of it, narrated in turn by Abrane and his Chummy Potts on the promenade,

was a very good half. The fiddler had played for the countess and handed her back her empty purse, with a

bow and a pretty speech. Nothing had been seen of him since. He had lost all his own money besides. "As of

course he would," said Potts. "A fellow calculating the chances catches at a knife in the air."

"Every francpiece he had!" cried Abrane. "And how could the jackass expect to keep his luck! Flings off his

old suit and comes back here with a rig of German bagsyou never saw such a figure!Shoreditch Jew's

They confessed ruefully to having backed him a certain distance, notwithstanding. "He took it so coolly, just

"And he had something to bear, Braney, when you fell on him," said Potts, and murmured aside: "He can be

smartish. Hears me call Braney Rufus, and says he, like a fellowchin on his fiddle`Captain Mountain,

Fleetwood glanced round: he could have wrung Woodseer's hand. He saw young Cressett instead, and hailed

him: "Here you are, my gallant! You shall flash your maiden sword tonight. When I was under your age by

a long count, I dealt sanctimoniousness a flick o' the cheek, and you shall, and let 'em know you're a man.

The boy showed some recollection of the lectures of his queen, but he had not the vocables for resistance to

an imperative senior at work upon sneaking inclinations. "Promised Lady F.!do you hear him?" Fleetwood

called to the couple behind; and as gamblers must needs be parasites, manly were the things they spoke to

At halfpast eleven, the prisoner of his word entered under the Schloss portico, having vowed to himself on

the way, that he would satisfy the formulas to gain release by a deferential bow to the great personages, and

straightway slip out into the heavenly starlight, thence down among the jolly Parisian and Viennese

BY the first light of an autumn morning, Henrietta sat at her travellingdesk, to shoot a spark into the breast

of her lover with the story of the great event of the night. For there had been one, one of our biggest, beyond

all tongues and trumpets and possible anticipations. Wonder at it hammered on incredulity as she wrote it for

"Grey Dawn. You are greeted. This, if you have been tardy on the journey home, will follow close on the

heels of the prowest, I believe truest, of knights, and bear perhaps to his quick mind some help to the solution

"The Ball in every way a success. Grand Duke and Duchess perfect in courtesy, not a sign of the German

morgue. Livia splendid. Compared to Day and Night. But the Night eclipses the Day. A summer sea of

"I tell you the very truth when I say your Carinthia did. If you had seen her,the `poor dear girl' you sigh to

speak of, with the doleful outlook on her fortunes: `portionless, unattractive!' Chillon, she was magical!

You cannot ever have seen her irradiated with happiness. Her pleasure in the happiness of all around her was

part of the charm. One should be a poet to describe her. It would task an artist to paint the rosecrystal she

became when threading her way through the groups to be presented. This is not meant to say that she looked

beautiful. It was the something above beautymore unique and impressivelike the Alpine snowcloak

"You choose to think, is it Riette who noticed my simple sister so closely before . . . ? for I suppose you to be

reading this letter a second time and reflecting as you read. In the first place, acquaintance with her has

revealed that she is not the simple persononly in her manner. Under the beams of subsequent events, it is

true I see her more picturesquely. But I noticed also just a suspicion of the `grenadier' stride when she was on

the march to make her curtsey. But Livia had no cause for chills and quivers. She was not the very strange

bird requiring explanatory excuses; she dances excellently, and after the first dance, I noticed she minced her

steps in the walk with her partner. She catches the tone readily. If not the image of her mother, she has

inherited her mother's bent for the graces; she needs but a small amount of practice.

"Take my assurance of that; and you know who has critical eyes. Your anxiety may rest; she is equal to any

"As expected by me, my Lord Tyrant appeared, though late, near midnight. I saw him bowing to the Ducal

party. Papa had led your `simple sister' there. Next I saw the Tyrant and Carinthia conversing. Soon they

were dancing together, talking interestedly, like cheerful comrades. Whatever his faults, he has the merit of

being a man of his word. He said he would come, he did not wish to come, and he came.

"His word binds himI hope not fatally; irrevocably, it certainly does. There is charm of character in that.

"It occurred during their third dance. Your Riette was not in the quadrille. O but she was a snubbed young

"A little later and he had vanished. Carinthia Kirby may already be written Countess of Fleetwood! His hand

was offered and hers demanded in plain terms. Her brother would not be so astounded if he had seen the

brilliant creature she wasis, I could say; for when she left me here, to go to her bed, she still wore the

`afterglow.' She tripped over to me in the ball room to tell me. I might doubt, she had no doubt whatever. I

fancied he had subjected her to some degree of trifling. He was in a mood. His moods are known to me. But

no, he was precise; her report of him strikes the ear as credible, in spite of the marvel it insists on our

"`Lord Fleetwood has asked me to marry him.' Neither assurance nor bashfulness; newspaper print; and an

"Now, `wife' is one of the words he abhors; and he loathes the hearing of a girl as `engaged.' However,

"She has repeated them to me here in my bedroom. There is no variation. She remembers every syllable. He

went so far as to urge her to say whether she would as willingly utter consent if they were in a church and a

"I transcribe verbatim scrupulously. There cannot be an error, Chillon. It seems to show, that he has

embraced the serious meaning of the wordor seriously embraced the meaning, reads better. I have seen his

"But why wonder so staringly? They both love the mountains. Both are wildish. She was looking superb. And

he had seen her do a daring thing on the rocks on the heights in the early morning, when she was out by

herself, unaware of a spectator, he not knowing who she was;the Fates had arranged it so. That was why he

took to her so rapidly. So he told her. She likes being admired. The preparation for the meeting does really

seem `under direction.' She likes him too, I do think. Between her repetitions of his compliments, she praised

his tone of voice, his features. She is ready to have the fullest faith in the sincerity of his offer; speaks without

any impatience for the fulfilment. If it should happen, what a change in the fortunes of a girl!of more than

"Now I must rest`eyelids fall.' It will be with a heart galloping. No rest for me till this letter flies. Good

"Livia will not hear of it, calls up all her pretty languor to put it aside. It is the same today as last night.

`Why mention Russett's nonsense to me?' Carinthia is as quietly circumstantial as at first. She and the tyrant

talked of her native home. Very desirous to see it! means to build a mansion there! `He said it must be the

"I suppose I slept. I woke with my last line to you on my lips, and the great news thundering. He named

Esslemont and his favouritealways uninhabitedCader Argau. She speaks them correctly. She has an

"Do not forget alsoLivia is affected by her distastethat he is a gentleman. He plays with his nobility.

With his reputation of gentleman, he has never been known to play. You will understand the slightly

hypocritical airit is not of sufficient importance for it to be alluded to in papa's presence I put on with

"Yes, I danced nearly all the dances. One, a princeling in scarlet uniform, appearing fresh from under earth,

Prussian: a weighty young Graf in green, between sage and bottle, who seemed to have run off a tree in the

forest, and was trimmed with silver like dewdrops: one in your Austrian white, dragon de Boh�me, if I

caught his French rightly. Others as well, a list. They have the accomplishment. They are drilled in it young,

as girls are, and so few Englishmeneven English officers. How it may be for campaigning, you can

pronounce; but for dancing, the pantalon collant is the perfect uniform. Your critical Henrietta had not to

"I shall be haunted by visions of Chillon's amazement until I hear or we meet. I serve for Carinthia's

mouthpiece, she cannot write it, she says. It would be related in two copybook lines, if at all.

"The amazement over London! The jewel hand of the kingdom gone in a flash, to `a raw mountain girl,' as

will be said. I can hear Lady Endor, Lady Eldritch, Lady Cowry. The reasonable woman should be Lady

Arpington. I have heard her speak of your mother, seen by her when she was in frocks.

"Enter the `plighted.' Poor Livia! to be made a dowager of by any but a damsel of the family. She may well

ridicule `that nonsense of Russett's last night'! Carinthia kisses, embraces, her brother. I am to say: `What

Henrietta tells you is true, Chillon.' She is contented though she has not seen him again and has not the look

"Chillon's Viennese waltz was played by the band:played a second time, special request, conveyed to the

leader by Prince Ferdinand. True, most true, she longs to be home across the water. But be it admitted, that to

any one loving colour, music, chivalry, the Island of Drab is an exile. Imagine, then, the strange magnetism

"Adieu. Livia's `archplotter' will weigh the letter he reads to the smallest fraction of a fraction before he

"I could leave it and come to it again and add and add. I foresee in Livia's mind a dread of the aforesaid

`arch,' and an interdict. So the letter must be closed, sealed and into the box, with the hand I still call mine,

though I should doubt my right if it were contested fervently. I am singing the waltz.

"P.S.My Lord Tyrant has departedas on other occasions. The prisoner of his word is sure to take his

airing before he presents himself to redeem it. His valet is left to pay bills, fortunately for Livia. She entrusted

her purse yesterday to a man picked up on the road by my lord, that he might play for her. Captain Abrane

assured her he had a star, and Mr. Potts thought him a rus� comp�re, an adept of those dreadful

gamblingtables. Why will she continue to play! The purse was returned to her, without so much as a piece

of silver in it; the man has flown. Sir M. Corby says, he is a man whose hands betray himor did to Sir M.;

expects to see him one day on the wrong side of the criminal bar. He struck me as not being worse than

absurd. He was, in any case, an unfit companion, and our C. would help to rescue the Eccentric from such

complicating associates. I see worlds of good she may do. Happily, he is no slave of the vice of gambling; so

she would not suffer that anxiety. I wish it could be subjoined, that he has no malicious pleasure in

misleading others. Livia is inconsolable over her pet, young Lord Cressett, whom he yesterday induced to `try

his luck'with the result. We leave, if bills are paid, in two days. Captain Abrane and Mr. Potts left this

afternoon; just enough to carry them home. Papa and your blissful sister out driving. Riette within her four

"IT is a dark land," Carinthia said, on seeing our Island's lowered clouds in swift motion, without a break of

She said it, we know. That poor child Carinthia Jane, when first she beheld Old England's shores, tossing

in the packet boat on a wild Channel sea, did say it and think it, for it is in the family that she did; and no

wonder that she should, the day being showery from the bed of the sun, after a frosty three days, at the close

of autumn. We used to have an eye of our own for English weather before printed Meteorological

Observations and Forecasts undertook to supplant the shepherd and the poacher, and the pilot with his worn

brown leather telescope tucked beneath his arm. All three would have told you, that the end of a three days'

frost in the late season of the year and the early, is likely to draw the warm winds from the Atlantic over

Quite by the chance of things, Carinthia Jane looked on the land of her father and mother for the first time

under those conditions. There can be no harm in quoting her remark. Only I have to say itexperience

causes apprehension, that we are again to be delayed by descriptions, and an exposition of feelings; taken for

granted, of course, in a serious narrative; which it really seems these moderns think designed for a frequent

arrest of the actors in the story and a searching of the internal state of this one or that one of them: who is laid

out stark naked and probed and expounded, like as in the celebrated picture by a great painter: and we,

thirsting for events as we are, are to stop to enjoy a lecture on Anatomy. And all the while the windows of the

lectureroom are rattling, if not the whole fabric shaking, with exterior occurrences or impatience for them to

come to pass. Every explanation is sure to be offered by the course events may take; so do, in mercy, I say,

She thought our Island all the darker because Henrietta had induced her to talk on the boat of her mountain

home and her last morning there for the walk away with Chillon John. Soon it was to appear supernaturally

Now, this had happenedand comment on it to yourselves, remembering always, that Chillon John was a

lover, and a lover has his excuses, though they will not obviate the penalties he may incur; and dreadful they

were. After reading Henrietta's letter to him, he rode out of his Canterbury quarters across the country to the

borders of Sussex, where his uncle Lord Levellier lived, on the ridge of ironstone, near the wild land of a

forest, Croridge the name of the place. Now, Chillon John knew his uncle was miserly, and dreaded the

prospect of having to support a niece in the wretched establishment at Lekkatts, or, as it was popularly called,

Leancats; you can understand why. But he managed to assure himself he must in duty consult with the senior

and chief member of his family on a subject of such importance as the proposal of marriage to his lordship's

The consultation was short: "You will leave it to me," his uncle said: and we hear of business affairs between

them, involving payment of moneys due to the young man; and how, whenever he touched on them, his uncle

immediately fell back on the honour of the family and Carinthia Jane's reputation, her good name to be

vindicated, and especially that there must be no delays, together with as close a reckoning as he could make

of the value of Lord Fleetwood's estates in Kent and in Staffordshire and South Wales, and his house property

"He will have means to support her," said the old lord, shrugging as if at his own incapacity for that burden.

The two then went to the workshops beside a large pond, where there was an island bordered with birch trees

and workmen's cottages near the main building; and that was an arsenal containing every kind of sword and

lance and musket, rifle and fowlingpiece and pistol, and more gunpowder than was, I believe, allowed by

law. For they were engaged in inventing a new powder for howitzer shells, of tremendous explosive power.

Nothing further did either of them say concerning the marriage. Nor did Carinthia Jane hear any mention of

Lord Fleetwood from her brother on the landingplace at Dover. She was taken to Admiral Baldwin

Fakenham's house in Hampshire; and there she remained, the delight of his life, during two months, patiently

expecting and rebuking the unmaidenliness of her expectations, as honest young women in her position used

to do. So did they sometimes wait for years; they have waited until they withered into their graves, like the

vapours of a brief winter's day; a moving picture of a sex restrained by modesty in those purer times from the

Two months she waited in our "dark land." January arrived, and her brother. Henrietta communicated the

"My Janey, you are asked by Lord Fleetwood whether it is your wish that he should marry you."

Now, usually a wellborn young woman's answer, if a willing one, is an example of weak translation. Here it

Henrietta knew the man enough to be glad he did not hear. She herself would have felt a little shock on his

How far those two were innocent in not delivering the whole of Lord Fleetwood's message to Carinthia Jane

through Lord Levellier, we are unable to learn. We may suspect the miserly nobleman of curtailing it for his

purposes; and such is my idea. But the answer would have been the same, I am sure.

In consequence and straight away, Chillon John betakes him to Admiral Baldwin and informs him of Lord

Fleetwood's proposal on the night at Baden, and renewal of it through the mouth of Lord Levellier, not

communicating, however (he may really not have known), the story of how it had been wrung from the earl

by a surprise movement on the part of the onearmed old lord, who burst out on him in the street from the

ambush of a Clubwindow, where he had been stationed every day for a fortnight, indefatigably to watch for

the passing of the earl, as there seemed no other way to find him. They say, indeed, there was a scene,

judging by the result, and it would have been an excellent scene for the stage; though the two noblemen were

to all appearance politely exchanging their remarks. But the audience hearing what passes, appreciates the

courteous restraint of an attitude so contrasting with their tempers. Behind the ostentation of civility, their

For it chanced, that the young earl, after a period of refuge at his Welsh castle, supposing, as he well might,

that his latest mad freak of the proposal of his hand and title to the strange girl in a quadrille at a foreign

castle had been forgotten by her, and the risks of annoyance on the subject had quite blown over, returned to

town, happy in having done the penance for his impulsiveness, and got clean againthat is to say, struck off

his fetters and escaped from importunitiesthe very morning of the day when Lord Levellier sprang upon

him! It shows the old campaigner's shrewdness in guessing where his prey would come, and not putting him

on his guard by a call at his house. Out of the window he looked for all the hours of light during an entire

fortnight. "In the service of my sister's child," he said. "To save him from the cost of maintaining her," say his

Now, the imparting of the wonderful news to Admiral Baldwin Fakenham was, we read, the whiff of a

tropical squall to lay him on his beam ends. He could not but doubt; and his talk was like the sails of a big

ship rattling to the first puff of wind. He had to believe; and then, we read, he was for hours like a vessel

rolling in the trough of the sea. Of course he was a disappointed father. Naturally his glance at the loss to

Henrietta of the greatest prize of the matrimonial market of all Europe and America was vexing and

saddening. Then he woke up to think of the fortunes of his "other girl," as he named her, and cried: "Crinny

So thereupon, standing before him, Chillon John, from whom he had the news, bent to him slightly, as his

elegant manner was, and lengthened the admiral's chaps with another proposal; easy, deliberate, precise, quite

the respectful bandit, if you please, determined on having his daughter by all means, only much preferring the

legal, formal, and friendly. Upon that, in the moment of indecision, Henrietta enters, followed by Admiral

Baldwin's heroine, his Crinny, whom he embraced and kissed, congratulated and kissed again. One sees the

So it was done, down in that Hampshire household on the heights near the downs, whence you might behold,

off a terra firma resembling a roll of billows, England's big battleships in line fronting the island; when they

were a spectacle of beauty as well as power: which now they are no more, but will have to be, if they are both

to float and to fight. For I have had quoted to me by a great admirer of the Old Buccaneer, one of the dark

sayings in his MAXIMS FOR MEN, where Captain John Peter Kirby commends his fellowmen to

dissatisfaction with themselves if they have not put an end to their enemy handsomely. And he advises the

copying of Nature in this; whose elements have always, he says, a pretty, besides a thorough, style of doing

it, when they get the better of us; and the one by reason of the other. He instances the horse, the yacht, and

chiefly the sword, for proof, that the handsomest is the most effective. And he prints large: "UGLY IS ONLY

HALF WAY TO A THING." To an invention, I suppose he intends to say. But looking on our huge

foundering seamonsters and the disappearance of the unwieldy in Nature, and the countenances of

criminals, who are, he bids us observe, always in the long run beaten, I seem to see a meaning our country

So, as I said, it was done; for Admiral Baldwin could refuse his Crinny nothing; as little as he would deny

anything to himself, the heartiest of kindly hosts, fathers, friends. Carinthia Jane's grand good fortune covered

that pit, the question of money, somehow, and was, we may conceive, a champagne wine in their reasoning

faculties. The admiral was in debt, Henrietta had no heritage, Chillon John was the heir of a miserly uncle

owing him sums and evading every application for them, yet they behaved as people who had the cup of

golden wishes. Perhaps it was because Henrietta and her lover were so handsome a match as to make it seem

to them and others they must marry; and as to character, her father could trust her to the man of her choice

more readily than to the wealthy young nobleman; of whose discreetness he had not the highest opinion. He

reconciled this view with his warm feeling for the Countess of Fleetwood to be, by saying: "Crinny will tame

him!" His faith was in her dauntless bold spirit, not thinking of the animal she was to tame.

Countess Livia, after receiving Henrietta's letter of information, descended on them and thought them each

and all a crazed set. Love, as a motive of action for a woman, she considered the female's lunacy and suicide.

Men are born subject to it, happily, and thus the balance between the lordly half of creation and the frail is

rectified. We women dress, and smile, sigh, if you like, to excite the malady. But if we are the fools to share

it, we lose our chance; instead of the queens, we are the slaves, and instead of a life of pleasure, we pass from

fever to fever at a tyrant's caprice: he does rightly in despising us. Ay, and many a worthy woman thinks the

same. Educated in dependency as they are, they come to the idea of love to snatch at it for their weapon of the

man's weakness. For which my lord calls them heartless, and poets are angry with them, rightly or wrongly.

It must, I fear, be admitted for a truth, that sorrow is the portion of young women who give the full measure

of love to the engagement, marrying for love. At least, Countess Livia could declare subsequently she had

foretold it and warned her cousin. Not another reflection do you hear from me, if I must pay forfeit of my

privilege to hurry you on past descriptions of places and anatomy of character and impertinent talk about

philosophyin a story. When we are startled and offended by the insinuated tracing of principal incidents to

a threadbare spot in the nether garments of a man of no significance, I lose patience.

Henrietta's case was a secondary affair. What with her passionit was nothing lessand her lover's cunning

arts, and her father's consent given, and in truth the look of the two together, the dissuasion of them from

union was as likely to keep them apart as an exhortation addressed to magnet and needle. Countess Livia

attacked Carinthia Jane and the admiral backing her. But the admiral, having given his consent to his

daughter's marriage, in consequence of the earl's pledged word to "his other girl," had become a zealot for

this marriage: and there was only not a grand altercation on the subject because Livia shunned annoyances.

Alone with Carinthia Jane, as she reported to Henrietta, she spoke to a block, that shook a head and wore a

thin smile and nursed its own idea of the better knowledge of Edward Russett, Earl of Fleetwood, gained in

Livia put the question, she put it twice rather sternly, and the girl came out with: "Oh, he meant it!"

The nature, the pride, the shifty and furious moods of Lord Fleetwood were painted frightful to her.

Whether to set her down as an enamoured idiot or a creature not a whit less artful than her brother, was

Countess Livia's debate. Her inclination was to misdoubt the daughter of the Old Buccaneer: she might be

simple, at her age; and she certainly was ignorant; but she clung to her prize. Still the promise was extracted

from her, that she would not worry the earl to fulfil the word she supposed him to mean in its full meaning.

The promise was unreluctantly yielded. No, she would not write. Admiral Fakenham, too, engaged to leave

Meanwhile, Chillon John had taken a journey to Lekkatts; following which, his uncle went to London. Lord

Fleetwood heard that Miss Kirby kept him bound. He was again the fated prisoner of his word.

And following that, not so very long, there was the announcement of the marriage of Chillon John

KirbyLevellier, Lieutenant in the King's Own Hussars, and Henrietta, daughter of Admiral Baldwin

Fakenham. A county newspaper paragraph was quoted for its eulogy of the Beauty of Hampshirenot too

strong, those acquainted with her thought. Interest at Court obtained an advancement for the bridegroom: he

was gazetted Captain during his honeymoon, and his prospects under his uncle's name were considered fair,

though certain people said at the time, it was likely to be all he would get while old Lord Levellier of

Now, as it is good for those to tell who intend preserving their taste for romance and hate anatomical lectures,

we never can come to the exact motives of any extraordinary piece of conduct on the part of man or woman.

Girls are to read, and the study of a boy starts from the monkey. But no literary surgeon or chemist shall

explain positively the cause of the behaviour of men and women in their relations together; and speaking to

rescue my story, I say we must with due submission accept the facts. We are not a bit the worse for

wondering at them. So it happened that Lord Fleetwood's reply to Lord Levellier's hammerhammer by post

and messenger at his door, one may call it, on the subject of the celebration of the marriage of the young

Cr*sus and Carinthia Jane, in which there was demand for the fixing of a date forthwith, was despatched on

The letter, lost for many years, turned up in the hands of a Kentish auctioneer, selling it on behalf of a

farmserving man, who had it from Lord Levellier's cook and housemaid, among the things she brought him

as her wifely portion after her master's death, and this she had not found saleable in her husband's village at

her price, but she had got the habit of sticking to the scraps, being proud of hearing it said that she had

skinned Leancats to some profit: and her expectation proved correct after her own demise, for her husband

putting it up at the auction, our relative on the mother's side, Dr. Glossop, interested in the documents and

particulars of the story as he was, had it knocked down to him, in contest with an agent of a London

gentleman, going as high as two pounds ten shillings, for the sum of two pounds and fifteen shillings. Count

the amount that makes for each word of a letter a marvel of brevity, considering the purport! But Dr. Glossop

was right in saying he had it cheap. The value of that letter may now be multiplied by ten: nor for that sum

"MY LORD: I drive to your churchdoor on the fourteenth of the month at ten *.*., to keep my appointment

That letter was dated from Lord Fleetwood's Kentish mansion, Esslemont, the tenth of the month. He must

have quitted London for Esslemont, for change of scene, for air, the moment after the news of Henrietta's

marriage. Carinthia Jane received the summons without transmission of the letter from her uncle on the

Unfortunately, Admiral Fakenham, a real knight and chevalier of those past times, would not let her mount

the downs to have her farewell view of the big ships unaccompanied by him; and partly and largely in pure

chivalry, no doubt; but her young idea of England's grandeur, as shown in her great vessels of war, thrilled

him, too, and restored his youthful enthusiasm for his noble profession or made it effervesce. However it was,

he rode beside her and rejoiced to hear the young girl's talk of her father as a captain of one of England's

thunderers, and of the cruelty of that Admiralty to him: at which Admiral Baldwin laughed, but had not the

heart to disagree with her, for he could belabour the Admiralty in season, cause or no cause. Altogether he

much enjoyed the ride, notwithstanding intimations of the approach of "his visitor," as he called his attacks of

Riding home, however, the couple passed through a heavy rainfall, and the next day, when he was to drive

with the bride to Lekkatts, gout, the fiercest he had ever known, chained him fast to his bed. Such are the

There he lay, protesting that the ceremony could not possibly be for the fourteenth, because Countess Livia

had, he now remembered, written of her engagement to meet Russett on the night of that day at a ball at Mrs.

Cowper Quillett's place, Canleys, lying south of the Surrey hills: a house famed for its gatherings of beautiful

women; whither Lord Fleetwood would be sure to engage to go, the admiral now said; and it racked him like

gout in his mind, and perhaps troubled his conscience about handing the girl to such a young man. But he was

lying on his back, the posture for memory to play the fiend with us, as we read in the BOOK OF MAXIMS of

the Old Buccaneer. Admiral Baldwin wished heartily to be present at his Crinny's wedding "to see her

launched," if wedding it was to be, and he vowed the date of the fourteenth, in Lord Levellier's announcement

of it, must be an error and might be a month in advance, and ought to be. But it was sheer talking and raving

for a solace to his disappointment or his anxiety. He had to let Carinthia Jane depart under the charge of his

housekeeper, Mrs. Carthew, a staid excellent lady, poorly gifted with observation.

Her report of the performance of the ceremony at Croridge village church, a half mile from Lekkatts, was

highly reassuring to the anxious old admiral still lying on his back with memory and guilt at their fiend's play,

and livid forecasts hovering. He had recollected that there had been no allusion in Lord Levellier's message to

settlements or any lawyer's preliminaries, and he raged at himself for having to own it would have been the

"All passed of correctly," Mrs. Carthew said. "The responses of the bride and bridegroom were particularly

She was reserved upon the question of the hospitality of Lekkatts. The place had entertained her during her

necessitated residence there, and honour forbade her to smile concordantly at the rosy admiral's mention of

Leancats. She took occasion however, to praise the Earl of Fleetwood's "eminently provident considerateness

for his bride, inasmuch as he had packed a hamper in his vehicle," which was a fourinhand, driven by

He was informed: "The Countess of Fleetwood sat on the box on the left of my lord."

"Lord Fleetwood was very methodical. He is not, or was not, voluntarily a talker."

"His lordship wore a rather low beaver and a buttoned white overcoat, not out of harmony with the bride's

"Ah! he's a good whip, men say. Keeps firstrate stables, hacks, and bloods. Esslemont hard by will be the

place for their honeymoon, I guess. And he's a lucky dog, if he knows his luck."

So said Admiral Baldwin. He was proceeding to say more, for he had a prodigious opinion of the young

countess and the benefit of her marriage to the British race. As it concerned a healthy constitution and

motherhood, Mrs. Carthew coughed and retired. Nor do I reprove either of them. The speculation and the

decorum are equally commendable. Masculine ideas are one thing; but let feminine ever be feminine, or our

At Croridge village church, then,one of the smallest churches in the kingdom,the ceremony was

performed and duly witnessed, names written in the vestry book, the clergyman's fee, the clerk, and the

pewwoman, paid by the bridegroom. And thus we see how a pair of lovers, blind with the one object of

lovers in view; and a miserly uncle, all on edge to save himself the expense of supporting his niece; and an

idolatrous old admiral, on his back with gout; conduced in turn and together to the marriage gradually

exciting the world's wonder, till it eclipsed the story of the Old Buccaneer and Countess Fanny, which it

Mrs. Carthew remembered Carinthia Jane's last maiden remark and her first bridal utterance. On the way,

walking to the church of Croridge from Lekkatts, the girl said: "Going on my feet, I feel I continue the

mountain walk with my brother when we left our home." And after leaving the church, about to mount the

coach, she turned to Mrs. Carthew, saying, as she embraced her: "A happy bride's kiss should bring some

good fortune." And looking down from her place on the top of the coach: "Adieu, dear Mrs. Carthew. A day

She must actually have had it in her sight as a day of glory: and it was a day of the clouds off our rainy

quarter, similar in every way to the day of her stepping on English soil and saying: "It is a dark land." For the

heart is truly declared to be our colourist. A day having the gale in its breast, sweeping the whole country and

bending the trees for the twigs to hiss like spray of the billows around our island, was a day of golden

splendour to the young bride of the Earl of Fleetwood, though he scarcely addressed one syllable to her, and

they sat side by side all but dumb, he like a coachman driving an unknown lady fare, on a morning after a

MENTION has been omitted or forgotten by the worthy Dame, in her vagrant fowl's treatment of a story she

cannot incubate, will not relinquish, and may ultimately addle, that the bridegroom, after walking with a

disengaged arm from the little village church at Croridge to his coach and four at the cross of the roads to

Lekkatts and the lowland, abruptly, and as one pursuing a deferential line of conduct he had prescribed to

The glass of the window dropped. The head of a man emerged. It was the head of one of the bargefaced

In an instant the heavyheaded but not illlooking fellow was nimble and jumped from the coach.

Heavy though the look of him might be, his feet were light; they flipped a bar of a hornpipe at a touch of the

ground. Perhaps they were allowed to go with their instinct for the dance, that his master should have a

sample of his wakefulness. He quenched a smirk and stood to take orders; clad in a flat blue cap, a brown

Fleetwood heard the young lady say: "I would choose, if you please, to sit beside you."

"In!" was the smart command to him; and he popped in with the agility of his popping out.

Then Carinthia made reverence to the grey lean figure of her uncle and kissed Mrs. Carthew. She needed no

help to mount the coach. Fleetwood's arm was rigidly extended, and he did not visibly wince when this

foreign girl sprang to the first hand grip on the coach and said: "No, my husband, I can do it," unaided, was

Her stride from the axle of the wheel to the step higher would have been a graceful spectacle on Alpine crags.

Fleetwood swallowed that, too, though it conjured up a mocking recollection of the Baden woods, and an

astonished wild donkey preparing himself for his harness. A sour relish of the irony in his present position

sharpened him to devilish enjoyment of it, as the finest form of loathing: on the principle that if we find

ourselves consigned to the nether halls, we do well to dance drunkenly. He had cried for Romance here it

He raised his hat to Mrs. Carthew and to Lord Levellier. Previous to the ceremony, the two noblemen had

interchanged the short speech of mannered duellists punctiliously courteous in the opening act. Their civility

was maintained at the termination of the deadly work. The old lord's bosom thanked the young one for not

requiring entertainment and a repast; the young lord's thanked the old one for a strict military demeanour at

A couple of liveried grooms at the horses' heads ran and sprang to the hinder seats as soon as their master had

taken the reins. He sounded the whip caressingly: off those pretty trotters went.

Mrs. Carthew watched them, waving to the bride. She was on the present occasion less than usually an acute

or a reflective observer, owing to her admiration of lordly state and masculine commandership; and her

The lady thought it, notwithstanding an eccentricity in the wedding ceremony, such as could not but be

noticeable. But very wealthy noblemen were commonly, perhaps necessarily, eccentric, for thus they proved

Lord Levellier sounded loud eulogies of the illustrious driver's team. His meditation, as he subsequently

stated to Chillon, was upon his vanquished antagonist's dexterity, in so conducting matters, that he had to be

taken at once, with naught of the customary preface and apology for taking to himself the young lady, of

We have to suppose, that the curious occupant of the coach inside aroused no curiosity in the pair of absorbed

Speculations regarding the chances of a fall of rain followed the coach until it sank and the backs of the two

liveried grooms closed the chapter of the wedding; introductory to the honeymoon at Esslemont, seven miles

distant by road, to the right of Lekkatts. It was out of sight that the coach turned to the left, Northwestward.

A FAMOUS maxim in the book of the Old Buccaneer, treating of PRECAUTION, as "The brave man's clean

It should mean, that brave men entering the jaws of hurricanes are found to have cheerful hearts in them

when they know they have done their best. But, touching the picture of happiness, conceive the bounteous

Bacchic spirit in the devoutness of a Sophocles, and you find comparison neighbour closely between the

sealed wineflask and the bride, who is being driven by her husband to the nest of the unknown on her

Seated beside him, with bosom at heave and shut mouth, in a strange land, travelling cloudlike, rushing like

the shower cloud to the vale, this Carinthia, suddenly wedded, passionately grateful for humbleness exalted,

virginly sensible of treasures of love to give, resembled the inanimate and most inspiring; was mindless and

inexpressive, past memory, beyond the hopes, a thing of the thrilled blood and skylark air, since she laid her

hand in this young man's. His not speaking to her was accepted. Her blood rather than recollection revived

their exchanges during the dance at Baden, for assurance that their likings were one, their aims rapturously

Could she give as much as he? It was hardly asked. If we feel we can give our breath of life, the strength of

the feeling fully answers. It bubbles perpetually from the depth like a well spring in tumult. Two hearts that

For the rest, her hunger to admire disposed her to an absorbing sentience of his acts; the trifles, gestures,

manner of this and that; which were seized as they flew, and swiftly assimilated to stamp his personality.

Driving was the piece of skill she could not do. Her husband's mastery of the reins endowed him with the

beauty of those harmonious trotters he guided and kept to their pace; and the humming rush of the pace, the

smooth torrent of the brown heathknolls and reddish pits and hedgelines and grassflats and copses

pouring the counterway of her advance, belonged to his wizardry. The bearing of her onward was her

abandonment to him. Delicious as mountain air, the wind sang; it had a song of many voices. Quite as much

as on the mountains, there was the keen, the blissful, nerveknotting catch of the presence of danger in the

steep descents, taken as if swallowed, without swerve or check. She was in her husband's hands. At times, at

the pitch of a rapid shelving, that was like a fall, her heart went down; and at the next throb exalted before it

rose, not reasoning why;her confidence was in him; she was his comrade whatever chanced. Up over the

mountainpeaks she had known edged moments, little heeded in their passage, when life is poised as a

crystal pitcher on the head, in peril of a step. Then she had been dependent on herself. Now she had the joy of

His hard leftward eye had view of her askant, if he cared to see how she bore the trial; and so relentlessly did

he take the slopes, that the man inside pushed out an inquiring pate, the two grooms tightened arms across

their chests. Her face was calmly set, wakeful, but unwrinkled: the creature did not count among timid

girlsor among civilized. She had got what she wanted from her madmanmad in his impulses, mad in his

reading of honour. She was the sister of Henrietta's husband. Henrietta bore the name she had quitted. Could

madness go beyond the marrying of the creature? He chafed at her containment, at her courage, her silence,

her withholding the brazen or the fawnish lookup, either of which he would have hated.

He, however, was dragged to look down. Neither Gorgon nor Venus, nor a mingling of them, she had the

chasm of the face, recalling the face of his bondage, seen first that night at Baden. It recalled and it was not

the face; it was the skull of the face, or the flesh of the spirit. Occasionally she looked, for a twinkle or two,

the creature or vision she had been, as if to mock by reminding him. She was the abhorred delusion, who

captured him by his nerves, ensnared his wordthe doing of a foul witch. How had it leapt from his mouth?

She must have worked for it. The word spokenshe must have known ithe was bound, or the detested

To see her now, this girl, insisting to share his name, for a slip of his tongue, despite the warning sent her

through her uncle, had that face much as a leaden winter landscape pretends to be the country radiant in

colour. She belonged to the order of the variable animalsa woman indeed!womanish enough in that.

There are men who love womenthe idea of woman. Woman is their shepherdess of sheep. He loved

freedom, loathed the subjection of a partnership; could undergo it only in adoration of an ineffable splendour.

He had stepped to the altar fancying she might keep to her part of the contract by appearing the miracle that

subdued him. Seen by light of day, this bitter object beside him was a witch without her spells; that is, the

skeleton of the seductive, ghastliest among horrors and ironies. Let her have the credit of doing her work

thoroughly before the exposure. She had done it. She might have helped such was the stipulation of his

mad freak in consenting to the bondageyes, she might have helped to soften the sting of his wound. She

was beside him bearing his name, for the perpetual pouring of an acid on the wound that vile

He glanced down at his possession:heaven and the yawning pit were the contrast! Poisoned honey is after

all honey while you eat it. Here there was nothing but a rocky bowl of emptiness. And who was she? She was

the sister of Henrietta's husband. He was expected to embrace the sister of Henrietta's husband. Those two

This creature was also the daughter of an ancient impostor and desperado called the Old Buccaneer; a

distinguished member of the family of the Lincolnshire Kirbys, boasting a present representative grimly

acquitted, men said, on a trial for murder. An eminent alliance! Society considered the Earl of Fleetwood

wildish, though he could manage his affairs. He and his lawyers had them under strict control. How of

himself? The prize of the English marriage market had taken to his bosom for his winsome bride the daughter

of the Old Buccaneer. He was to mix his blood with the blood of the Lincolnshire Kirbys, lying pallid under

How had he come to this pass, which swung him round to think almost regretfully of the scorned multitude of

He was renowned and unrivalled as the man of stainless honour: the one living man of his word. He had

never broken it never would. There was his distinction among the herd. In that, a man is princely above

princes. The nobility of Edward Russett, Earl of Fleetwood, surpasses the nobility of common nobles. But, by

The creature beside him is a franked issue of her old pirate of a father in one respectnothing frightens her.

There she sits; not a screw of her brows or her lips, and the coach rocked, they were sharp on a spill midway

of the last descent. It rocks again. She thinks it scarce worth while to look up to reassure him. She is looking

Carinthia felt at once how wild the wish or half expectation that he would resume the glowing communion of

She had made it more offensive, by so richly toning the official title just won from him as to ring it on the

nerves; one had to block it or be invaded. An anticipation that it would certainly recur haunted every opening

Now that it did not, he felt the gap, relieved, and yet pricked to imagine a mimicry of her tones, for the odd

foreignness of the word and the sound. She had a voice of her own beside her courage. At the altar, her

responses had their music. No wonder: the day was hers. "My husband" was a manner of saying "my fish."

He spoke very civilly. "Oblige me by telling me what name you are accustomed to answer to."

She seemed unaware of an Arctic husband, and replied: "My father called me Carinshort for Carinthia. My

mother called me Janey; my second name is Jane. My brother Chillon says both. Henrietta calls me Janey."

The creature was dead flesh to goads. But the name of her sisterinlaw on her lips returned the stroke

Fleetwood smartened the trot of his team, and there was a todo with the rakish leaders.

Fairies of a malignant humour in former days used to punish the unhappiest of the naughty men who were not

favourites, by suddenly planting a hump on their backs. Off the bedevilled wretches pranced, and they

kicked, they snorted, whinnied, rolled, galloped, outflying the wind, but not the dismal rider. Marriage is our

incubus now. No explanation is offered of why we are afflicted; we have simply offended, or some one

absent has offended, and we are handy. The spiteful hag of power ties a wife to us; perhaps for the reason,

that we behaved in the spirit of a better time by being chivalrously honourable. Wives are just as inexplicable

Fleetwood lashed his horses until Carinthia's low cry of entreaty rose to surprise. That stung him.

"Leave the coachman to his devices: we have an appointment and must keep it," he said.

They were on the level of the vale, going along a road between farms and mansions, meadows and

gardenplots and park palings. A strong warm wind drove the pack of clouds over the treetops and

charged at the branches. English scenery, animating air; a rouse to the blood and the mind. Carinthia did not

ask for hues. She had come to love of the dark land with the warm lifting wind, the big trees and the hedges,

and the stately houses, and people requiring to be studied, who mean well and are warm somewhere below, as

English people dislike endearments, she had found. It might be that her husband disliked any show of

fondness. He would have to be studied very much. He was not like others, as Henrietta had warned her. From

thinking of him fervidly, she was already past the marvel of the thought that she called him husband. At the

same time, a curious intimation, gathered she knew not whence, of the word "husband" on a young wife's lips

as being a foreign sound in England, advised her to withhold it. His behaviour was instructing her.

"Are you weatherwise?able to tell when the clouds will hold off or pelt," he said, to be very civil to a

She collected her understanding, apparently; treating a conversational run of the tongue as a question to be

pondered; and the horses paid for it. Ordinarily he was gentle with his beasts. He lashed at her in his heart for

"I do not know. He was a seaman of the navy, like Admiral Fakenham is. Weather at sea, weather on the

mountains, he could foretell it always. He wrote a book; I have a copy you will read. It is a book of Maxims.

He often speaks of the weather. English weather and women, he says. But not my mother. My mother he

stood aside by herselfpas capricieuse; du tout! Because she would be out in the weather and brave the

weather. She rode, she swam, best of any woman. If she could have known you, what pleasure for me!

Mother learnt to read mountain weather from father. I did it too. But sometimes on the high fields' upper

snows it is very surprising. Father has been caught. Here the cloud is down near the earth and the strong wind

keeps the rain from falling. How long the wind will blow I cannot guess. But you love the mountains. We

spoke . . . And mountains' adventures we both love. I will talk French if you like, for, I think, German you do

not speak. I may speak English better than French; but I am afraid of my English with you."

"Dear me!" quoth Fleetwood, and he murmured politely and cursorily, attentive to his coachman business.

She had a voice that clove the noise of the wheels, and she had a desire to talk that was evident. Talk of

her father set her prattling. It became clear also to his not dishonest, his impressionable mind, that her baby

English might be natural. Or she was mildly playing on it, to give herself an air.

He had no remembrance of such baby English at Baden. There, however, she was in a state of

enthusiasmthe sort of illuminated transparency they show at the end of fireworks. Mention of her old

scapegrace of a father lit her up again. The girl there and the girl here were no doubt the same. It could not be

said that she had duped him; he had done it for himself acted on by a particular agency. This creature had

not the capacity to dupe. He had armed a bluntwitted young woman with his idiocy, and she had dealt the

But her look at times, and now and then her voice, gave sign that she counted on befooling him as well, to

reconcile him to his bondage. The calculation was excessive. No woman had done it yet. Idiocy plunged him

the step which reawakened understanding; and to keep his whole mind alert on guard against any sort of

satisfaction with his bargain, he frankly referred to the cause. Not female arts, but nature's impulses, it was

his passion for the wondrous in the look of a woman's face, the new morning of the idea of women in the

look, and the peep into imaginary novel character, did the trick of enslaving him. Call it idiocy. Such it was.

Once acknowledged, it is not likely to recur. An implacable reason sits in its place, with a keen blade for

efforts to carry the imposture further afield or make it agreeable. Yet, after giving his word to Lord Levellier,

he had prodded himself to think the burden of this wild young woman might be absurdly tolerable and a

A solicitude for the animal was marked by his inquiry: "You are not hungry yet?"

They had a hamper and were independent of stoppages for provision, he informed her. What more delightful?

cried her look, seeing the first midday's rest and meal with Chillon on the walk over the mountain from their

She could get up enthusiasm for a stocked hamper! And when told of some business that drew him to a

meadow they were nearing, she said she would be glad to help, if she could. "I learn quickly, I know."

His head acquiesced. The daughter of the Old Buccaneer might learn the business quickly, perhaps; a

singularly cutting smile was on his tight lips, in memory of a desire he had as a boy to join hands with an

Amazonian damsel and be out over the world for adventures, comrade and bride as one. Here the creature sat.

Life is the burlesque of young dreams; or they precipitate us on the roar and grin of a recognized beast world.

The devil possessing him gnawed so furiously that a partial mitigation of the pain was afforded by sight of

waving hats on a hillrise of the road. He flourished his whip. The hats continued at windmill work. It

signified brisk news to him, and prospect of glee to propitiate any number of devils.

She replied: "I am not used to attendance on me. Henrietta's maid would help. I did not want her. I had no

maid at home. I can do for myself. Father and mother liked me to be very independent."

The hilltop was gained; twenty paces of pretty trotting brought up the coach beside an inn porch, in the style

of the finish dear to whips, and even imperative upon them, if they love their art. Two gentlemen stood in the

road, and a young woman at the inn door; a darkhaired girl of an anxious countenance. Her puckers

"All right, Madge; nothing to fear," Fleetwood called to her, and she curtseyed.

He alighted, saying to her, before he spoke to his friends: "I've brought him safe; had him under my eye the

The lightlegged, bargefaced man touched ground capering. He was greeted "Kit" by the pair of gentlemen,

who shook hands with him, after he had faintly simulated the challenge to a jig with Madge. She flounced

from him, holding her arms up to the lady. Landlord, landlady, and hostler besought the lady to stay for the

fixing of a ladder. Carinthia stepped, leaped, and entered the inn, Fleetwood remarking: "We are very

"Cordy bally, by Jove!" Potts cried. But the moment after this disengaged ejaculation, he was taken with a

"No, sir, not at the Opera," Fleetwood rejoined. "The lady's last public appearance was at the altar."

"Sort of a suspicion of having seen her somewhere. Left her husband behind, has she?"

The scoring of a proposition of Euclid on the forehead of Potts amused him and the other gentleman, who

was hailed "Mallard!" and cared nothing for problems involving the female of man when such work was to

the fore as the pugilistic encounter of the Earl of Fleetwood's chosen Kit Ines, with Lord Brailstone's

Ines had done pretty things from the age of seventeen to his twentythird year. Remarkably clever things they

were, to be called great in the annals of the Ring. The point, however, was, that the pockets of his backers had

seriously felt his latest fight. He received a dog's licking at the hands of Lummy Phelps, his inferior in skill,

fighting two to one of the odds; and all because of his fatal addiction to the breaking of his trainer's imposed

fast in liquids on the night before the battle. Right through his training, up to that hour, the rascal was devout;

the majority's money rattled all on the snug safe side. And how did he get at the bottle? His trainers never

could say. But what made him turn himself into a headlong ass, when he had only to wait a night to sit among

friends and worshippers drinking off his tumbler upon tumbler with the honours? It was past his wits to

explain. Endurance of his privation had snapped in him; or else, which is more likely, this Genius of the Ring

was tempted by his genius on the summit of his perfected powers to believe the battle his own, and celebrate

In any case, he drank, and a minor man gave him the dog's licking. "Went into it puffy, came out of it

bunged," the chronicle resounding over England ran. Old England read of an "eyeless carcase" heroically

stepping up to time for three rounds of mashing punishment. If he had won the day after all, the country

would have been electrified. It sympathized on the side of his backers too much to do more than nod a short

approval of his fortitude. To sink with flag flying is next to sinking the enemy. There was talk of a girl

present at the fight, and of how she received the eyeless, almost faceless, carcase of her sweetheart Kit, and

carried him away in a little donkeycart, comfortably cushioned to meet disaster. This petty incident drew the

attention of the Earl of Fleetwood, then beginning to be known as the diamond of uncounted facets, patron of

The devotion of the girl Madge to her sweetheart was really a fine story. Fleetwood touched on it to Mr.

Mallard, speaking of it like the gentleman he could be, while Chumley Potts wagged impatient acquiescence

"Money's Bank of England today, you think?" he interposed, and had his answer after Mallard had said:

"You may double your bets, Chummy. I had the fellow to his tea at my dinnertable yesterday evening;

locked him in his bedroom, and had him up and out for a morning spin at six. His trainer, Flipper, 's on the

"Deuce of a goodlooking girl," Potts could now afford to say; and he sang out: "Feel fit, lucky dog?"

A ruffle of sourness shot over the features of the earl, and was noticed by both eager betters, who exchanged

Potts inspected his watch, and said half aloud: "Liver, ten to one! That never meant bad luckexcept bad to

act on. We slept here last night, you know. It's a mile and a quarter from the Royal Sovereign to the field of

glory. Pretty well time to start. Brailstone has a drive of a couple of miles. Coaches from London down by

this time. Abrane's dead on Ben Todds, any odds. Poor old Braney! `Steady man, Todds.' Backs him because

he's a `respectable citizen,'don't drink. A prizefighter total abstainer has no spurts. Old Braney's branded

for the losing side. You might bet against Braney blindfold, Mallard. How long shall you take to polish him

"Well, sir, steady Benny ought to be satisfied with his dose in, say, about forty minutes. Maybe he won't own

"Jump in," Fleetwood said to his man. "We may be five minutes after time, Chummy. I had a longer drive,

"I fancy she sticks to the coach; I don't know her tastes. Madge must see her hero through it, that's positive."

Potts deferred his astonishment at the things he was hearing and seeing, which were only Fleetwood's riddles.

The fight and the bets rang every other matter out of his head. He beheld the lady, who had come down from

the coach like a columbine, mount it like Beanstalk Jack. Madge was not half so clever, and required a hand

After giving hurried directions to Rundles, the landlord of the Royal Sovereign, Fleetwood took the reins, and

"You have heard, I dare sayit's an English scene," he spoke, partly turning his face, to Carinthia;

"particularly select to day. Their Majesties might look on, as the C�sars did in Rome. Pity we can't persuade

them. They ought to set the fashion. Here we have the English people at their grandest, in prime condition, if

they were not drunk overnight; and dogged, perfectly awake, magnanimous, all for fair play; fine fellows,

But the daughter of the Old Buccaneer would have inherited a tenderness for the sight of blood. She should

make a natural Lady Patroness of England's National Sports. We might turn her to that purpose; wander over

England with a tail of shouting riffraff; have exhibitions, join in them, display our accomplishments; issue

challenges to fence, shoot, walk, run, box, in time: the creature has muscle. It's one way of crowning a freak;

we follow the direction, since the deed done can't be undone; and a precious poetical life, too! You may get

as royally intoxicated on swipes as on choice wine; win a name for yourself as the husband of such a wife; a

name in sporting journals and shilling biographies: quite a revival of the Peerage they have begun to rail at!

CHEERS at an open gate of a field saluted the familiar scarlet of the Earl of Fleetwood's coach in Kentish

land. They were chorister cheers, the spontaneous ringing out of English country hearts in homage to the

nobleman who brightened the heaviness of life on English land with a spectacle of the noble art

distinguishing their fathers. He drove along over muffling turf; ploughboys and blue butcherboys, and

smocked old men, with an approach to a hundredweight on their heels, at the trot to right and left; all hoping

for an occasional sight of the jewel called Kitty, that he carried inside. Kitty was there.

Kitty's eyes are shut. Think of that: cradled innocence and angels' dreams and the whole of the hymn just

before ding dongbang on noses and jaws! That means confidence? Looks like it. But Kitty's not asleep:

you try him. He's only quiet because he has got to undergo great exertion. Last fight he was knocked out of

time, because he went into it honest drunk, they tell. And the earl took him up, to give him a chance of

recovering his good name, and that's Christian. But the earl, he knows a man as well as a horse. He's one to

follow. "Go to a fayte down at Esslemont, you won't forget your day. See there, he's brought a lady on the top

o' the coach. That seems for to signify he don't expect it's going to be much of a bloody business. But there's

no accounting. Anyhow, Broadfield 'll have a name in the papers for Sunday reading. In comes t'other lord's

They were pronounced to be both the right sort of noblemen for the country. Lord Brailstone's blue coach

rattled through an eastern gate to the corner of the thirtyacre meadow, where Lord Fleetwood had drawn up,

a toss from the ring. The meeting of the blue and scarlet coaches drew forth Old England's thunders; and

when the costly treasures contained in them popped out heads, the moment was delirious. Kit Ines came after

his head on a bound. Ben Todds was ostentatiously deliberate: his party said he was no dancingmaster. He

stepped out, grave as a barge emerging from a lock, though alive to the hurrahs of supporters and punctilious

in returning the formal portion of his rival's too roguish nod. Their look was sharp into the eyes, just an

Brailstone and Fleetwood jumped to the grass and met, talking and laughing, precise upon points of business,

otherwise cordial: plenipotentiaries of great powers, whom they have set in motion and bind to the

ceremonial opening steps, according to the rules of civilized warfare. They had a short colloquy with

newspaper reporters;an absolutely fair, square, upright fight of Britons was to be chronicled. Captain

Abrane, a tower in the crowd, registered bets whenever he could. Curricles, gigs, carts, ponytraps, boys on

Was either champion born in Kent? An audacious boy proclaimed Kit Ines a man of Kent. Why, of course he

was! and that was why the Earl of Fleetwood backed our cocky Kitty, and means to land him on the top of his

profession. Ben Todds was shuffled aside, as one of their Londoners, destitute of county savour.

All very well, but have a spy at Benny Todds. Who looks the square man? And hear what that big gentleman

of the other lord's party says. A gentleman of his height and weight has a right to his opinion. He's dead

against Kit Ines: it's fists, not feet, he says, 'll do it today; stamina, he says. Benny has got the stamina.

Todds' possession of the stamina, and the grand voice of Captain Abrane, and the Father Christmas,

roastbeefofOld England, face of the umpire declared to be on the side of Lord Brailstone's colour blue,

darkened the star of Kit Ines till a characteristic piece of behaviour was espied. He dashed his cap into the

ring and followed it, with the lightest of vaults across the ropes. There he was, the first in the ring: and that

stands for promise of first blow, first blood, first flat knock down, and last to cry for quarter. His pair of

"Generally until one or the other can't see. You are not obliged to see it; you can be driven away if you wish."

Potts frankly hoped that his friend might be doing so. "Todds is jolly well backed. He's in prime condition.

"No; but the odds are like ten per cent: they conjure the gale, and be hanged," said Potts; he swore at his

All in the ring were shaking hands. Shots of a desire to question and comment sped through Carinthia's veins

and hurt her. She had gathered that she spoke foolishly to her husband's ear, so she kept her mouth shut,

though the unanswered of her inquisitive ignorance in the strange land pricked painfully at her bosom. She

heard the girl behind her say: "Our colours!" when the colour scarlet enwound with Lord Brailstone's blue

was tied to the stake: and her husband nodded; he smiled; he liked to hear the girl.

Potts climbed up, crying: "Toilets complete! Now for paws out, and then at it, my hearties!"

Choice of corners under the leaden low cloud counted for little. A signal was given; a man outside the ring

eyed a watch, raised a hand; the two umpires were on foot in their places; the pair of opposing seconds

hurried out cheery or bolt business words to their men; and the champions advanced to the scratch. Todds

first, by the courtesy of Ines, whose decorous control of his legs at a weighty moment was rightly read by his

Their hands grasped firmly: thereupon becoming fists of a hostile couple in position. And simply to learn

which of us two is the better man! Or in other words, with four simple fists to compass a patent fact and stand

it on the historic pedestal, with a little red writing underneath:you never can patent a fact without it. But

mark the differences of this kind of contention from all otherespecially the Parliamentary: this is positive,

it has a beginning and an end; and it is good humoured from beginning to end; trial of skill, trial of stamina;

Nature and Art; Old English; which made us what we are; and no rancours, no vows of vengeance; the beaten

Kittites had need to be confident in the skill of their lither lad. His facer looked granite. Fronting that mass,

Kit you might not to lash about for comparisonscall a bundle of bamboo. Ay, but well knitted, springy,

alive every inch of him; crafty, too, as you will soon bear witness. He knows he has got his task, and he's the

Kit was now on his toes, all himself, like one who has found the key. He feinted. Quick as lightning, he

landed a bolt on Ben's jib, just at the tollbar of the bridge, between the eyes, and was off, out of reach,

Will you believe it?Ben received a second spanking cracker on the spectaclesseat: neat indeed; and, poor

payment for the compliment, he managed to dig a drive at the ribs. As much of that game as may suit you,

sturdy Ben! But hear the shout, and behold: First blood to Kit Ines! That telltale nose of old Ben's has

mounted the Earl of Fleetwood's colours, and all his party are looking Brailstoneblue.

"So far!" said Fleetwood. His grooms took an indication: the hamper was unfastened; sandwiches were

handed. Carinthia held one; she tried to nibble, in obedience to her husband's example. Madge refused a bite

Hearing Carinthia say to her: "I hope he will not be beaten, I hope, I hope," she made answer: "You are very

Gentlemen below were talking up to the earl. A Kentish squire of an estate neighbouring Esslemont

introduced a Welsh squire he had driven to see the fun, by the name of Mr. Owain Wythan, a neighbour of

the earl's down in Wales. Refreshments were offered. Carinthia submissively sipped the sparkling wine,

which stings the lips when we are indisposed to it. The voice of the girl Madge rang on the tightened chords

of her breast. Madge had said she was praying: and to pray was all that could be done by two women. Her

husband could laugh loudly with Mr. Potts and the other gentlemen and the strangers. He was quite sure the

man he supported would win; he might have means of knowing. Carinthia clung to his bare words, for the

A roaring peal went up from the circle of combat. Kit had it this time. Attacking Ben's peepers, he was bent

on defending his own, and he caught a bodyblow that sent him hopping back to his pair of seconds, five

clear hops to the rear, like a smashed surgewave off the rock. He was respectful for the remainder of the

round. But hammering at the system he had formed, in the very next round he dropped from a tremendous

repetition of the blow, and lay flat as a turbot. The bets against him had simultaneously a seesaw rise.

"Chummy!" signifying a crow over Potts, rang out of the hollows of Captain Abrane on Lord Brailstone's

Carinthia put a hand behind her to Madge. It was grasped, in gratitude for sympathy or in feminine politeness.

Lord Fleetwood sat watch in hand. "Up," he said; and, as if hearing him, Kit rose from the ministering

second's knee. He walked stiffly, squared after the fashion of a man taught caution. Ben made play. They

rounded the ring, giving and taking. Ben rushed, and had an emollient; spouted again and was corked; again,

and received a neat redwaxen stopper. He would not be denied at Kit's door, found him at home and hugged

It did him no great harm; it might be taken for an enlivener; he was dead on his favourite spot the ensuing

round, played postman on it. So cleverly, easily, dancingly, did he perform the double knock and the retreat,

that Chumley Potts was moved to forget his wagers and exclaim: "Racketball, by Jove!"

"If he doesn't let the fellow fib the wind out of him," Mallard addressed his own crab eyeballs.

Lord Fleetwood heard and said coolly: "Tight strung. I kept him fasting since he earned his breakfast. You

don't wind an empty rascal fit for action. A sword through the lungs won't kill when there's no air in them."

That was printed in the Few Words before the Encounter, in the Book of MAXIMS FOR MEN. Carinthia,

hearing everything her husband uttered, burned to remind him of the similarity between his opinions and her

She was learning, that for some reason, allusions to her father were not acceptable. She squeezed the hand of

Madge, and felt a pressure, like a scream, telling her the girl's heart was with the fight beneath them. She

thought it natural for her. She wished she could continue looking as intently. She looked because her husband

looked. The dark hills and clouds curtaining the run of the stretch of fields relieved her sight.

The clouds went their way; the hills were solid, but like a blue smoke; the scene here made them very distant

and strange. Those two men were still hitting, not hating one another; only to gratify a number of

unintelligible people and win a success. But the earth and sky seemed to say, What is the glory? They were

insensible to it, as they are notthey are never insensible to noble grounds of strife. They bless the spot, they

light lamps on it; they put it into books of history, make it holy, if the cause was a noble one or a good one.

Or supposing both those men loved the girl, who loved one of them! Then would Carinthia be less reluctantly

Her infant logic stumbled on for a reason while she repressed the torture the scene was becoming, as though a

reason could be found by her submissive observation of it. And she was right in believing that a reason for

the scene must or should exist. Only, like other bewildered instinctive believers, she could not summon the

great universe or a life's experience to unfold it. Her one consolation was in squeezing the hand of the girl

Not stealthily done, it was not objected to by the husband whose eye was on all. But the persistence in doing

it sank her from the benignity of her station to the girl's level: it was conduct much too raw, and grated on the

Madge pleased him better. She had the right to be excited, and she was very little demonstrative. She

hadwell, in justice, the couple of them had, only she had it morethe tone of the women who can be

screwed to witness a spill of blood, peculiarly catching to hear;a tone of every string in them snapped

except the silver string. Catching to hear? It is worth a stretching of them on the rack to hear that low

buzzhum of their inner breast . . . By heaven! we have them at their best when they sing that note.

His watch was near an hour of the contest, and Brailstone's man had scored first knockdown blow, a

particularly clean floorer. Thinking of that, he was cheered by hearing Chummy Potts, whose opinions he

"Yeast to him!" For the face of Todds was visibly swelling to the ripest of plums from Kit's deliveries. Down

he went. He had the sturdy legs which are no legs to a clean blow. Odds were offered against him.

"Oh! pretty play with your right, Kit!" exclaimed Mallard, as Kit fetched his man an ugly stroke on the round

of the waist behind, and the crowd sent up the name of the great organs affected: a sickener of a stroke, if

dealt soundly. It meant more than it showed. Kit was now for taking liberties. Light as ever on his pins, he

now and then varied his attentions to the yeasty part, delivering a wakener in unexpected quarters: masterly

She kept her sight fixed, replying: "Yes, I think . . ." Carinthia joined with her: "I must believe it that he will:

but will the other man, poor man, submit? I entreat him to put away his pride. It is hisoh, poor man!"

The voices of these alien women thrilled the fray and were a Bardic harp to Lord Fleetwood.

Mr. Owain Wythan looked up. "Worthy of Theocritus. It's the Boxing Twin and the Bembrycian giant. The

He explained to the incomprehensible lady he fancied he had somewhere seen, that the battle might be known

"It's like Foreign Affairs and the Stock Exchange," he said to the more intelligent males. "If I want to know

exactly how the country stands, I turn to the Money Article in the papers. That's a barometrical certainty. No

use inquiring abroad. Look at old Rufus Abrane. I see the state of the fight on the old fellow's mug. He hasn't

"Captain MountainRufus Mus!" cried Lord Fleetwood, and laughed at the penetrative portrait Woodseer's

The Rufus Mus in the Captain Mountain exposed his view of the encounter, by growing stiller, apparently

growing smaller, without a squeak, like the entrapped; and profoundly contemplative, after the style of the

absolutely detached, who foresee the fatal crash, and are calculating, far ahead of events, the means for

The close of the battle was on the visage of Rufus Abrane fifteen minutes before that Elgin marble under red

paint in the ring sat on the knee of a succouring seconder, mopped, rubbed, dramprimed, puppypeeping,

inconsolably comforted, preparatory to the resumption of the greatcoat he had so hopefully cast from his

shoulders. Not downcast, by any means. Like an old Roman, the man of the sheer hulk with purple eye

mounds found his legs to do the manful thing, show that there was no bad blood, stand equal to all forms.

Ben Todds, if ever man in Old England, looked the picture you might label "Bellyful," it was remarked. Kit

Ines had an appearance of springy readiness to lead off again. So they faced on the opening step of their

Vanquisher and vanquished shook hands, engaged in a parting rally of goodhumoured banter; the beaten

man said his handsome word; the best man capped it with a compliment to him. They drink of different cups

today. Both will drink of one cup in the day to come. But the day went too clearly to crown the light and the

tight and the right man of the two, for moralizing to wag its tail at the end. Oldsters and youngsters agreed to

that. Science had done it: happy the backers of Science! Not one of them alluded to the philosophical

"hundred years hence." For when England, thanks to a spirited pair of our young noblemen, has exhibited one

of her characteristic performances consummately, Philosophy is bidden fly; she is a foreign bird.

KIT INES cocked an eye at Madge, in the midst of the congratulations and the p�ans pumping his arms. As

he had been little mauled, he could present a face to her, expecting a wreath of smiles for the victor.

What are we to think of the contrarious young woman who, when he lay beaten, drove him off the field and

was all tenderness and devotion? She bobbed her head, hardly more than a trifle pleased, one might say. Just

like females. They're riddles, not worth spelling. Then, drunk I'll get tonight, my pretty dear! the man

muttered, soured by her inopportune staidness, as an opponent's bruisings could never have rendered him.

She smiled a lively beam in answer to the earl; "Oh yes, I'm glad. It's your doing, my lord." Him it was that

she thanked, and for the moment prized most. The female riddle is hard to read, because it is compounded of

sensations, and they rouse and appeal to the similar cockatrices in us, which either hiss back or coil upon

themselves. She admired Kit Ines for his valour: she hated that ruinous and besotting drink. It flung skeletons

of a married couple on the wall of the future. Nevertheless her love had been all maternal to him when he lay

chastised and disgraced on account of his vice. Pity had done it. Pity not being stirred, her admiration of the

hero declared victorious, whose fortunes in uncertainty had stopped the beating of her heart, was eclipsed by

gratitude toward his preserver, and a sentiment eclipsed becomes temporarily coldish, against our wish and

our efforts, in a way to astonish; making her think that she cannot hold two sentiments at a time; when it is

"To see you dance," Potts rejoined, and mumbled: "But will he dance! Old Braney's down on his luck; he's a

specimen of a fellow emptier and not lighter. And won't be till suppertime. But, I say, Fleet, how the

With a bow to the lady's profile and a mention of a glimpse at Baden, Potts ejaculated: "It happened this

"No? Oh! Funny, upon my word. Though I don't know why not except that people . . ."

Fleetwood remarked to his bride: "Our friend has the habit of soliloquising in company. I forgot to tell you of

an appointment of mine at a place called Canleys, about twenty miles or more from here. I gave my word, so

I keep it. The landlady at the inn, Mrs. Rundles, motherly kind of woman; she will be attentive. They don't

cook badly, for an English inn, I have heard. Madge here will act as your lady'smaid for the time. You will

find her serviceable; she's a bruiser's lass and something above it.Ines informed me, Madge, you were

going to friends of yours at the Wells. You will stay at the Royal and wait on this lady, who bears my name.

You understand?A girl I can trust for courage, if the article is in request," he resumed to his bride; and

talked generally of the inn and the management of it, and its favoured position outside the village and

Carinthia had heard. She was more than ever the stunned young woman she had been since her mounting of

She said not a word. Why should she?her object was won. Give her that, and a woman's tongue will

consent to rest. The dreaded weapon rests also when she is kept spinning by the whip. She gives out a

pleasant hum, too. Her complexion must be pronounced dull in repose. A bride on her travels with an aspect

of wet chalk, rather helps to scare mankind from marriage: which may be good or bad; but she reflects a

sicklier hue on the captured Chessman calling her his own. Let her shine in privacy.

Fleetwood drew up at the Royal Sovereign, whereof the reigning monarch, in blue uniform on the signboard,

curtseyed to his equally windy subjects; and a small congregation of the aged, and some cripples and infants,

greeted the patron of Old England's manfullest display, cheering at news of the fight, brought them by many

Ines, victorious in battle, had scant notice from his love. "Yes, I'm glad," and she passed him to follow her

newly constituted mistress. His pride was dashed, all the foam of the first draw on the top of him blown off,

as he figuratively explained the cause of his gloom to the earl. "I drink and I gets a lickingthat girl nurses

and cossets me. I don't drink and I whops my manshe shows me her back. Ain't it encouragement, my

"You ought to know them by this time, you dolt," returned his patron, and complimented him on his bearing

in the fight. "You shall have your two hundred, and something will be added. Hold handy here till I mount. I

Whether to speak a polite adieu to the bride, whose absurd position she had brought on her own head, was

debated for half a minute. He considered that the wet chalkquarry of a beauty had at all events the merit of

not being a creature to make scenes. He went up to the sittingroom. If she was not there, he would leave his

She was there, and seated; neither crying, nor smiling, nor pointedly serious in any way, not conventionally at

her ease either. And so clearly was he impressed by her transparency in simplicity of expression, that he took

without a spurn at it the picture of a woman half drained of her blood, veiling the wound. And a young

woman, a stranger to suffering: perhapsas the creatures dolooking for the usual flummery tenderness,

what they call happiness; wondering at the absence of it and the shifty ghost of a husband she has got by

floundering into the bog known as Marriage. She would have it, and here she was!

He entered the situation and was possessed by the shivering delicacy of it. Surface emotions were not seen on

her. She might be a creature with a soul. Here and there the thing has been found in women. It is priceless

when found, and she could not be acting. One might swear the creature had no power to act.

She spoke without offence, the simplest of words, affected no solicitudes, put on no gilt smiles, wore no

reproaches: spoke to him as if so it happenedhe had necessarily a journey to perform. One could see all the

while big drops falling from the wound within. One could hear it in her voice. Imagine a crack of the string at

the bow's deep stress. Or imagine the bow paralyzed at the moment of the deepest sounding. And yet the

voice did not waver. She had now the richness of tone carrying on a music through silence.

Well, then, at least, he had not been the utterly duped fool he thought himself since the consent was pledged

More, she had beautyof its kind. Or splendour or grandeur, was the term for it. But it bore no name. None

of her qualities if they were qualitieshad a name. She stood with a dignity that the word did not express.

She endured meekly, when there was no meekness. Pain breathed out of her, and not a sign of pain was

visible. She had, under his present observation of her, beauty, with the lines of her face breaking in revolt

from beautyor requiring a superterrestrial illumination to show the harmony. He, as he now saw, had erred

grossly in supposing her insensitive, and therefore slow of a woman's understanding. She drew the breath of

pain through the lips: red lips and well cut. Her brown eyes were tearless, not alluring or beseeching or

repelling; they did but look, much like the skies opening high aloof on a wreck of storm. Her reddish

hairchestnut, if you willlet fall a skein over one of the rugged brows, and softened the ruggedness by

making it wilder, as if a great bird were winging across a shoulder of the mountain ridges. Conceived of the

mountains, built in their image, the face partook alternately of mountain terror or splendour; wholly, he

remembered, of the splendour when her blood ran warm. No longer the chalkquarry face,its paleness now

"You remember I told you," he said, "I have given my wordI don't break itto be at a Ball. Your uncle

was urgent to have the ceremony over. These clashes occur. The people hereI have spoken of that: people

of good repute for attention to guests. I am uncertain of the time . . . we have all to learn to wait. So then,

He was experiencing a novel nip of torment, of just the degree which takes a partial appeasement from the

inflicting of it, and calls up a loathed compassion. She might have been in his arms for a step, though she

He was allowed his escape, bearing with him enough of husband to execrate another enslaving pledge of his

word, that begat a frenzy to wreak some caresses on the creature's intolerably haunting image. Of course, he

could not return to her. How would she receive him? There was no salt in the thought of it; she was too

However, there would be fun with Chummy Potts on the drive to Canleys; fun with Rufus Abrane at Mrs.

Cowper Quillett's; and with the Countess Livia, smothered, struggling, fighting for life with the title of

Dowager. A desire for unbridled fun had hold of him: any amount of it, to excess in any direction. And

through this cloud, as a dry tongue after much wine craves water, glimpses of his tramp's walk with a

fellowtramp on a different road, enjoying strangely healthy vagabond sensations and vast ideas, brought the

vagrant philosopher refreshfully to his mind: chiefly for the reason that while in Woodseer's company he had

hardly suffered a stroke of pain from the thought of Henrietta. She was now a married woman, he was a

married manby the register. Stronger proof of the maddest of worlds could not be furnished.

Sane in so mad a world, a man is your flabby citizen among outlaws, good for plucking. Fun, at any cost, is

the one object worth a shot in such a world. And the fun is not to stop. If it does, we are likely to be got hold

of, and lugged away to the altarthe terminus. That foul disaster has happened, through our having

temporarily yielded to a fit of the dumps and treated a mad world's lunatic issue with some seriousness. But

fun shall be had with the aid of His Highness below. The madder the world, the madder the fun. And the

mixing in it of another element, which it has to beguile usromanceis not at all bad cookery. Poetic

romance is delusiona tale of a Corsair; a poet's brain, a bottle of gin, and a theatrical wardrobe. Comic

A daughter of the Old Buccaneer should participate in it by right of birth: she would expect it in order to feel

herself perfectly at home. Then, be sure, she finds an English tongue and prattles away as merrily as she does

when her old scapegrace of a father is the theme. Soninlaw to him! But the path of wisdom runs in the line

of facts, and to have wild fun and romance on this pantomime path, instead of kicking to break away from it,

we follow things conceived by the genius of the situation, for the delectation of the fair Countess of

Fleetwood and the earl, her delighted husband, quite in the spirit of the Old Buccaneer, father of the bride.

Carinthia sat beside the fire, seeing nothing in the room or on the road. Up in her bedchamber, the girl Madge

was at her window. She saw Lord Fleetwood standing alone, laughing, it seemed, at some thought; he threw

up his head. Was it a newly married man leaving his bride and laughing? The bride was a dear lady, fit for

better than to be driven to look on at a prizefighta terrible scene to a lady. She was left solitary: and this

her wedding day? The earl had said it, he had said she bore his name, spoke of coming from the altar, and the

lady had blushed to hear herself called Miss. The pressure of her hand was warm with Madge: her situation

Before he mounted the coach, Lord Fleetwood talked to Kit Ines. The girl ran downstairs to bid her lover

goodbye and show him she really rejoiced in his victory. Kit came to her saying: "Given my word of honour

Lord Fleetwood started his fresh team, casting no glance at the windows of the room where his bride was. He

His leaving of his young bride to herself this day was classed among the murky flashes which distinguished

the deeds of noblemen. But his laughter on leaving her stamped it a cruelty; of the kind that plain mortals,

who can be monsters, commit. Madge conceived a pretext for going into the presence of her mistress, whose

attitude was the same as when she first sat in the chair. The lady smiled and said: "He is not hurt much?" She

The girl's heart of sympathy thumped, and her hero became a very minute object. He had spoken previously

of the making or not making a beast of himself, without inflicting a picture of the beast. His words took shape

now, and in consequence a little selfpity began to move. It stirred to swell the great wave of pity for the

lady, that was in her bosom. "Oh, he!" she said, and extinguished the thought of him; and at once her

Carinthia rose anxiously. The girl dropped at her feet. "You have been so good to me today, my lady! so

good to me today! I can't help itI don't oftenjust for this moment; I've been excited. Oh, he's well, he

will do; he's nothing. You say `poor child!' But I'm not; it's only excitement. I do long to serve you the best I

She stood up in obedience and had the arms of her young mistress pressing her. Tears also were streaming

They were two women. On the road to Canleys, the coach conveying men spouted with the lusty anecdote,

CONTENTION begets contention in a land of the pirate races. Gigs were at high rival speed along the road

from the battle field to London. They were the electrical wires of the time for an expectant population

bursting to have report of so thundering an event as the encounter of two champion light weights, nursed and

backed by a pair of gallant young noblemen, pick of the whole row of coronets above. London panted gaping

Chumley Potts offered Ambrose Mallard fair odds that the neat little trap of the chief sporting journal, which

had a reputation to maintain, would be over one or other of the bridges crossing the Thames first. Mallard had

been struck by the neat little trap of an impudent new and lowerpriced journal, which had a reputation to

gain. He took the proffered odds, on the cry as of a cracker splitting. Enormous difficulties in regard to the

testimony and the verifications were discussed; they were overcome. Potts was ready for any amount of

trouble; Mallard the same. There was clearly a race. There would consequently be a record. Visits to the

offices of those papers, perhaps half a day at the south end of London or on Westminster bridge, examining

witnesses, corner shopmen, watermen, and the like, would or should satisfactorily establish the disputed

Fleetwood had his fun; insomuch that he laughed himself into a sentiment of humaneness toward the couple

of donkeys and forgot his contempt of them. Their gamblings and their bets increased his number of

dependents; and imbeciles were preferable to dolts or the dry gilt figures of the circle he had to move in.

Matter for some astonishment had been furnished to the latter this day; and would cause an icy Signor stare

and rather an angry Signora flutter. A characteristic of that upper circle, as he knew it, is, that the good are

dull, the vicious very bad. They had nothing to please him but manners. Elsewhere this land is a land of no

manners. Take it and make the most of it, then, for its quality of brute honesty: which is found to flourish best

His irony landed him there. It struck the country a ringing blow. But it struck an almost effacing one at the

life of the young nobleman of boundless wealth, whose highest renown was the being a patron of

prizefighters. Husband of the daughter of the Old Buccaneer as well! perchance as a result. That philosopher

tramp named her "beautiful Gorgon." She has no beauty; and as for Gorgon, the creature has a look of timid

softness in waiting behind her rocky eyes. A barbaric damsel beginning to nibble at civilisation, is nearer the

Fleetwood's wrath with his position warned him against the dupery of any such alcove thoughts. For his

wrath revenged him, and he feared the being stripped of it, lest a certain fund of his own softness, that he

knew of, though few did, should pull him to the creature's feet. She belonged to him indeed; so he might put

her to the trial of whether she had a heart and personal charm, without the ceremony of wooingwhich, in

his case, tempted to the feeling desperately earnest and becoming enslaved. He speculated upon her eyelids

and lips, and her voice, when melting, as women do in their different ways; here and there with an

execrableperhaps pardonableart; one or two divinely. The vision drew him to a headlong plunge and

swim of the amorous mind, occupying a minute, filling an era. He corrected the feebleness, and at the same

time threw a practical coachman's glance on peculiarities of the road, requiring some knowledge of it if

He did not phrase it, that a talk with the fellow Woodseer of his mountains and his forests, and nature,

philosophy, poetry, would have been particularly healthy for him, almost as good as the good counsel he

needed and solicited none to give him. It swept among his ruminations while he pricked Potts and Mallard to

Gower Woodseer, the mention of whom is a dejection to the venerable source of our story, was then in the act

of emerging from the Eastward into the Southward of the line of Canterbury's pilgrims when they set forth to

worship, on his homeward course, after a walk of two days out of Dover. He descended London's borough,

having exactly twopence halfpenny for refreshment, following a term of prudent starvation, at the end of the

walk. It is not a district seductive to the wayfarer's appetite; as, for example, one may find the Jew's fry of

fish in oil, inspiriting the Shoreditch region, to be. Nourishment is afforded, according to the laws of

England's genius in the arts of reflection, at uninviting shops, to the necessitated stomach. A penn'orth of

crumb of bread, assisted on its laborious passage by a penn'orth of the rinsings of beer, left the natural

philosopher a ha'penny for dessert at the stall of an applewoman, where he withstood an inclination toward

the juicy fruit and chose nuts. They extend a meal, as a grimace broadens the countenance, illusorily; but they

help to cheat an emptiness in time, where it is nearly as offensive to our sensations as within us; and that

prolonged occupation of the jaws goes a length to persuade us we are filling. All the better if the substance is

indigestible. Tramps of the philosophical order, who are the practically sagacious, prefer tough grain for the

teeth. Woodseer's munching of his nuts awakened to fond imagination the picture of his father's dinner, seen

one day and little envied: a small slice of cold boiled muttonflesh in a crescent of white fat, with a lump of

Thus he returned to the only home he had, not disheartened, and bearing scenes that outvied London's

printshops for polychrome splendour, an exultation to recall. His condition, moreover, threw his father's life

and work into colour: the lean Whitechapel house of the minister among the poor; the joy in the saving of

souls, if he could persuade himself that such good labour advanced: and at the fall of light, the pastime task of

bootmakinga desirable occupation for a thinker. Thought flies best when the hands are easily busy.

Cobblers have excursive minds. Their occasional rap at the pegs diversifies the stitchings and is often happily

timed to settle an internal argument. Seek in a village for information concerning the village or the state of

mankind, you will be less disappointed at the cobbler's than elsewhere, it has been said.

As Gower had anticipated, with lively feelings of pleasure, Mr. Woodseer was at the wonted corner of his

back room, on the stool between two tallow candleflames, leatherscented strongly, when the wanderer

stood before him, in the image of a ball that has done with circling about a stable point.

"To be sure, you are. One can read it on your boots. Mrs. Jones will spread you a table. How many miles

They had worn to resemble the halfdozen thinedged layers of still upper cloud round the peep of coming

"About forty odd today, sir. They've done their hundreds of miles and have now come to dock. I'll ask Mrs.

Gower went to the housekeeper in the kitchen. His father's front door was unfastened by day; she had not set

"Now she's got the boy. There's clasping and kissing. He's all wild Wales to her."

The plate of meat was brought by Mary Jones with Gower beside her, and a sniffle of her happiness audible.

She would not, although invited to stay and burning to hear Gower, wait in the room where father and son

had to talk together after a separation, long to love's counting. She was a Welshwoman of the pure blood,

"Yes, dear lad, tobacco helps you on to the marrow of your story, and I too will blow the cloud," said Mr.

So Gower's recital of his wanderings began, more puffs than speech at the commencement. He was

alternately picturesque and sententious until he reached Baden; there he became involved, from thinking of a

"We must look into all the corners of the world to know it, sir, and the world has to be riddled or it riddles

"You played. The Lord be thanked you have kept your straight tongue! The Lord can always enter a heart of

truth. Sin cannot dwell with it. But you played for gain, and that was a licensed thieving; and that was a

backsliding; and there will have to be a climbing up. And what that means, your hold on truth will learn.

Touch sin and you accommodate yourself to its vileness. Ay, you love nature. Nature is not anchorage for

vessels like men. If you loved the Book you would float in harbour. You played. I do trust you lost."

"Sight of the tables; an itch to try themone's self as well; a notion that the losers were playing wrong. In

"Ah. The tippler's fumes in his head! Spotty business, Gower Woodseer. `Lead us not into temptation' is

After listening to an extended homily, with a general assent and tobacco's phlegm, Gower replied to his

father's "You starved manfully?" nodding: "From Baden to Nancy. An Alsatian cottager at times helped me

"Entering Nancy I subscribed to the dictum of our first fathers, which dogs would deliver, if they could

speak: that there is no driver like stomach: and I went head on to the College, saw the Principal: plea of

urgency. No engagement possible, to teach either French or English. But he was inquisitive touching the

urgency. That was my chance. The French are humane when they are not suspicious of you. They are

generous, if you put a light to their minds. As I was dealing with a scholarly one, I made use of such

ornamental literary skill as I possessed, to prove urgency. He supplied me with bread, fruit, and wine. In the

end he procured me pupils. I lodged over a baker's shop. I had good walks, and learnt something of forestry

therea taking study. When I had saved enough to tramp it home, I said my adieux to that good friend and

tramped away, entering London with about the same amount in small coin as when I entered Nancy. A

manner of exactly hitting the mark, that some would not find so satisfactory as it is to me."

The minister sighed. "There comes in the `philosophy,' I suppose. When will you understand, that this

`philosophy' is only the passive of a religion faith? It seems to suit you gentlemen of the road while you are

young. Work among the Whitechapel poor. It would be a way for discovering the shallows of your

"Murders, robberies, misusage of women, and misconduct of women!Drink, in short: about the same

amount. Drink is their death's river, rolling them on helpless as corpses, on tomay they find mercy! I and a

few standit's in the tide we stand here, to stop them, pluck them out, make life a bit sweet to them before

the poor bodies go beneath. But come! all's not dark, we have our gleams. I speak distressed by one of our

girls: a good girl, I believe; and the wilfullest that ever had command of her legs. A wellfavoured girl!

You'll laugh, she has given her heart to a prizefighter. Well, you can say, she might have chosen worse. He

drinks, she hates it; she loves the man and hates his vice. He swears amendment, is hiccupping at night; fights

a match on the morrow, and gets beaten out of formation. No matter: whenever, wherever, that man goes to

his fight, that girl follows to nurse him after it. He's her hero. Women will have one, and it's their lottery. You

read of such things; here we have it alive and walking. I am led to think they're an honest couple. They come

of established families. Her mother was out of Caermarthen; died under my ministration, saintly, forgiving

the drunkard. You may remember the greengrocer, Tobias Winch? He passed away in shrieks for one drop. I

had to pitch my voice to the top notes to get hearing for the hymn. He was a reverent man, with the craving

"A little girl at the greengrocer's hard by? She sold me apples; rather pretty," said Gower.

"A fine grown girl nowMadge Winch; a comely wench she is. It breaks her sister Sarah's heart. They both

manage the little shop; they make it prosper in a small way; enough, and what need they more? Then

Christopher Ines has on one of his matches. Madge drives her cart out, if it's near town. She's off down into

Kent today by coach, Sarah tells me. A great nobleman patronizes Christopher; a Lord Fleetwood, a lord of

wealth. And he must be thoughtful for these people: he sent Sarah word that Christopher should not touch

drink. You may remember a butcher Ines in the street next to us. Christopher was a wild lad, always at `best

man' with every boy he met: went to searan away. He returned a pugilist. The girl will be nursing him

now. I have spoken to her of him; and I trust to her; but I mourn her attachment to the man who drinks."

"He has other tastes. I know something of him, sir. He promises to be a patron of Literature as well. His

"Could he be persuaded to publish a grand edition of the Triads?" Mr. Woodseer said at once.

"Very little chance of my meeting him again. But those Triads! They're in our blood. They spring to tie knots

in the head. They push me to condense my thoughts to a tight ball. They were good for primitive times: but

theyor the trick of the mind engendered by themtrip my steps along the lines of composition. I produce

pellets instead of flowing sheets. It'll come right. At present I'm so bent to pick and perfect, polish my phrase,

"Ah," Mr. Woodseer breathed and smote. "This Literature is to be your profession for the means of living?"

"Nothing else. And I'm so low down in the market way of it, that I could not count on twenty pounds per

"Good work of the head wants an easy conscience. I've too much of you in me for a comfortable pensioner."

"Or is it not, that you have been living the gentleman out there, with just a holiday title to it?"

Gower was hit by his father's thrust. "I shall feel myself a pieman's chuckpenny as long as I'm unproductive,

Tea brought in by Mrs. Mary Jones rather brightened him until he considered that the enlivenment was due to

a purchase by money, of which he was incapable, and he rejected it, like an honourable man. Simultaneously,

the state of depression threw critic shades on a prized sentence or two among his recent confections. It was

rejected for the best of reasons and the most discomforting: because it racked our English; signifying, that he

He was in this wrestle, under a placid demeanour, for several days, hearing the shouts of Whitechapel Kit's

victory, and hearing of Sarah Winch's anxiety on account of her sister Madge; unaffected by sounds of joy or

grief, in his effort to produce a supple English, with Baden's Madonna for sole illumination of his darkness.

To her, to the illimitable gold mist of perspective and the innumerable images the thought of her painted for

him, he owed the lift which withdrew him from contemplation of himself in a very disturbing stagnant pool

of the wastes; wherein often will strenuous youth, grown faint, behold a face beneath a scroll inscribed

Impostor. All whose aim was high have spied into that pool, and have seen the face. His glorious lady would

The spell she cast had likewise power to raise him clean out of a neighbourhood hinting Erebus to the young

man with thirst for air, solitudes, and colour. Scarce imaginable as she was, she reigned here, in the idea of

her, more fixedly than where she had been visible; as it were, by right of her being celestially removed from

the dismal place. He was at the same time not insensible to his father's contented ministrations among these

homes of squalor; they pricked the curiosity, which was in the youthful philosopher a form of admiration. For

his father, like all Welshmen, loved the mountains. Yet here he lived, exhorting, ministering, aiding,

supported up to high good cheer by some, it seemed, superhuman backbone of uprightness;his religious

faith? Well, if so, the thing might be studied. But things of the frozen senses, lean and hueless things, were as

repellent to Gower's imagination as his father's dishes to an epicure. What he envied was, the worthy old

man's heart of feeling for others: his feeling at present for the girl Sarah Winch and her sister Madge, who

had not been heard of since she started for the fight. Mr. Woodseer had written to her relatives at the Wells,

He was relieved at last; and still a little perplexed. Madge had returned, he informed Gower. She was well,

she was well in health; he had her assurances that she was not excited about herself.

"She has brought a lady with her, a great lady to lodge with her. She has brought the Countess of Fleetwood

Gower heard those words from his father; and his father repeated them. To the prostrate worshipper of the

Countess of Fleetwood, they were a blow on the head; madness had set in here, was his first recovering

thought, or else a miracle had come to pass. Or was it a sham Countess of Fleetwood imposing upon the girl?

His father was to go and see the great lady, at the greengrocer's shop; at her request, according to Madge.

Conjectures shot their perishing tracks across a darkness that deepened and made shipwreck of philosophy.

Was it the very Countess of Fleetwood penitent for her dalliance with the gambling passion, in feminine need

of pastor's aid, having had report from Madge of this good shepherd? His father expressed a certain surprise;

Perhaps, in a crisis, a minister of religion is better armed than a philosopher. Gower would not own that, but

he acknowledged the evidences, and owned to envy; especially when he accompanied his father to the

"Here is the place." The small stuffed shop appeared to grow portentously cavernous and waveringly

CUSTOMERS were at the counter of the shop, and these rational figures, together with the piles of cabbages,

the sacks of potatoes, the pale small oranges here and there, the dominant smell of red herrings, denied the

Sarah Winch and a boy served at the counter. Sarah led the Mr. Woodseers into a corner knocked off the shop

and called a room. Below the top bars of a wizened grate was a chilly fire. London's light came piecemeal

through a smutstreaked window. If the wonderful was to occur, this was the place to heighten it.

"My son may be an intruder," Mr. Woodseer said. "He is acquainted with a Lord Fleetwood . . ."

"Madge will know, sir," replied Sarah, and she sent up a shrill cry for Madge from the foot of the stairs.

The girl ran down swiftly. She entered listening to Sarah, looking at Gower; to whom, after a bob and pained

smile where reverence was owing, she said, "Can you tell me, sir, please, where we can find Lord Fleetwood

Gower was unable to tell. Madge turned to Mr. Woodseer, saying soon after: "Oh, she won't mind; she'll be

The moments were of the palpitating order for Gower, although his common sense lectured the wildest of

And, of course, common sense proved to be right: the lady was quite another. But she struck on a sleeping

day of his travels. Her face was not one to be forgotten, and to judge by her tremble of a smile, she

They were soon conversing, each helping to paint the scene of the place where they had met.

"May I?" said Madge to her. "It is Lord Fleetwood's wedded wife, sir. He drove her from her uncle's, on her

wedding day, the day of a prizefight, where I was; he told me to wait on his lady at an inn there, as I've done

and will. He drove away that evening, and he hasn't"the girl's black eyebrows worked: "I've not seen him

since. He's a great nobleman, yes. He left his lady at the inn, expenses paid. He left her with no money. She

stayed on till her heart was breaking. She has come to London to find him. She had to walk part of the way.

She has only a change of linen we brought in a parcel. She's a stranger to England: she knows nobody in

London. She had no place to come to but this poor hole of ours she's so good as let welcome her. We can't do

He said: "Lord Fleetwood may not be in London," and chafed at himself for such a quaver.

"It's his house we want, sir, he has not been at his house in Kent. We want his London house."

"My dear lady," said Mr. Woodseer; "it might be as well to communicate the state of things to your family

without delay. My son will call at any address you name; or if it is a country address, I can write the items,

with my assurances of your safety under my charge, in my house, which I beg you to make your home. My

Carinthia replied: "You are kind to me, sir. I am grateful. I have an uncle; I would not disturb my uncle; he is

inventing guns and he wishes peace. It is my husband I have come to find. He did not leave me in anger."

She coloured. With a dimple of tenderness at one cheek, looking from Sarah to Madge, she said: "I would not

Sarah, at these words, caught up her apron. Madge did no more than breathe deep and fast.

An unoccupied, cold parlour in Mr. Woodseer's house that would be heated for a guest, urged him to repeat

his invitation, but he took the check from Gower, who suggested the doubt of Mary Jones being so good an

attendant upon Lady Fleetwood as Madge. "And Madge has to help in the shop at times."

Madge nodded, looked into the eyes of her mistress, which sanctioned her saying: "She will like it best here,

she is my lady and I understand her best. My lady gives no trouble: she is hardy, she's not like other ladies. I

and Sarah sleep together in the room next. I can hear anything she wants. She takes us as if she was used to

Sarah had to go to serve a customer. Madge made pretence of pricking her ears and followed into the shop.

How the marriage came about, how the separation, could not be asked and was not related.

"Our district is not all London, my dear lady," said Mr. Woodseer. "Good hearts are here, as elsewhere, and

as many, if one looks behind the dirt. I have found it since I laboured amongst them, now twenty years.

Unwashed human nature, though it is natural to us to wash, is the most human, we find."

Gower questioned the naturalness of human nature's desire to wash; and they wrangled goodhumouredly,

Carinthia's eyes dwelling on them each in turn; until Mr. Woodseer, pursuing the theme started by him to

interest her, spoke of consolations derived from his labours here, in exchange for the loss of his mountains.

"Ah, I love them! Father called me a daughter of the mountains. I was born in the mountains. I was leaving

my mountains on the day, I think it yesterday, when I met this gentleman who is your son."

"It was a day of great glory for me," said Carinthia. "Your foot did not pain you for long?"

"With my brother. My brother has married a most beautiful lady. He is now travelling his happy timemy

Struck by the contrast between the two simultaneous honeymoons, and a vision of the highspirited mountain

girl, seen in this place a young bride seeking her husband, Gower Woodseer could have performed that

unphilosophical part. He had to shake himself. She seemed really a soaring bird brought down by the fowler.

Gower stood waiting for her initiative, when the minister interposed: "There are books, books of our titled

peoplethe Peers, books of the Peerage. They would supply the address. My son will discover where to

examine them. He will find the address. Most of the great noblemen have a London house."

Gower went into the shop to speak with Madge. The girl was talking in the business tone to customers; she

finished her commission hurriedly and joined him on the pavement by the doorstep. Her voice was like the

"You've seen how brave she is, sir. She has things to bear. Never cries, never frets. Her marriage

dayleastways . . . I can't, no girl can tell. A great nobleman, yes. She waited, believing in him; she does.

She hasn't spoken to me of what she's had to bear. I don't know; I guess; I'm sure I'm right and him a man!

Girls learn to know men, call them gentlemen or sweeps. She thinks she has only to meet him to persuade

him she's fit to be loved by him. She thinks of love. Would heour tongues are tied except among ourselves

to a sister. Leaves her by herself, with only me, afterit knocks me dumb! Many a man commits a murder

wouldn't do that. She could force him tono, it isn't a house she wants, she wants him. He's her husband,

Mr. Woodseer. You will do what you can to help; I judge by your father. I and Sarah 'll slave for her to be as

comfortable as we can make her; we can't give her what she's used to. I shall count the hours."

"Did I?you won't lose time, sir?" she rejoined. "Her box is down at the beastly inn in Kent. Kind people, I

dare say; their bill was paid any extent, they said. She walked to his big house Esslemont for news of him.

And I'm not a snivelling wench either; but she speaks of him a way to make a girl drink her tears, if they ain't

"The minister reads us at the heart. Shall we hear the street of his house in London before night?"

"I'll be up, any hour, for a rap at the shutters. I want to take her to the house early next morning. She won't

mind the distance. She lies in bed, her eyes shut or open, never sleeping, hears any mouse. It shouldn't go on,

"I'm off," said Gower, unwontedly vexed at his empty pocket, that could not o�er the means for conveyance

The darkbrowed girl sent her straight eyes at him. They pushed him to hasten. On second thoughts, he

stopped and hailed her; he was moved to confirm an impression of this girl's features.

His mind was directed to the business burning behind them, honestly enough, as soon as he had them in sight

"She won't go to her uncle, I'm sure of that," said Madge. "He's a lord and can't be worried. It's her husband to

"She loves her brother. He's an officer. He's away on honeymoon. There's an admiral down Hampshire way, a

place I've been near and seen. I'd not have you go to any of them, sir, without trying all we can do to find

Lord Fleetwood. It's Admiral Fakenham she speaks of; she's fond of him. She's not minded to bother any of

"I shall see you tonight," said Gower, and set his face Westward, remembering that his father had named

Just in that tone of hers do Welshwomen talk of their country; of its history, when at home, of its mountains,

when exiled: and in a language like hers, bare of superlatives to signify an ardour conveyed by the fire of the

breath. Her quick devotion to a lady exciting enthusiasm through admiring pity for the grace of a muchtried

quiet sweetness, was explained; apart from other reasons, feminine or hidden, which might exist. Only a

Welsh girl would be so quick and all in it, with a voice intimating a heated cauldron under her mouth. None

but a Welshblooded girl, risking her good name to follow and nurse the man she considered a hero, would

carry her head to look virgin eyes as she did. One could swear to them, Gower thought. Contact with her

He had the Cymric and Celtic respect of character, which puts aside the person's environments to face the

soul. He was also an impressionable fellow among his fellows, a philosopher only at his leisure, in his

courted solitudes. Getting away some strides from this girl of the drilling voice,the shuddervoice, he

phrased it,the lady for whom she pleaded came clearer into his view and gradually absorbed him; though it

was an emulation with the girl Madge, of which he was a trifle conscious, that drove him to do his work of

service in the directest manner. He then fancied the girl had caught something of the tone of her lady: the

savage intensity or sincerity; and he brooded on Carinthia's position, the mixture of the astounding and the

woful in her misadventure. One could almost laugh at our human fate, to think of a drop off the radiant

mountain heights upon a Whitechapel greengrocer's shop, gathering the title of countess midway.

But nothing of the ludicrous touched her; no, and if we bring reason to scan our laugh at pure humanity, it is

we who are in the place of the ridiculous, for doing what reason disavows. Had he not named her, Carinthia,

Saint and Martyr, from a first perusal of her face? And Lord Fleetwood had read and repeated it. Lord

Fleetwood had become the instrument to martyrize her? That might be; there was a hoard of bad stuff in his

composition besides the precious: and this was a nobleman owning enormous wealth, who could vitiate

himself by disposing of a multitude of men and women to serve his will, a shifty will. Wealth creates the

magician, and may breed the fiend within him. In the hands of a young man, wealth is an invitation to

devilry. Gower's idea of the story of Carinthia inclined to charge Lord Fleetwood with very possible false

At the second of the aristocratic Clubs of London's West, into which he stepped like an easy member, the

hallporter did not examine his clothing from German hat to boots, and gave him Lord Fleetwood's town

address. He could tell Madge at night by the door of the shuttered shop, that Lord Fleetwood had gone down

"It means her having to wait," she said. "The minister has been to the coachoffice, to order up her box from

that inn. He did it in his name; they can't refuse; no money's owing. She must have a change. Sally has fifteen

"She held my hand while Kit Ines was at his work; and I was new to her, and a prizefighter's lass, they call

me:upon the top of that nobleman's coach, where he made me sit, behind her, to see the fight; and she his

wedded lady that morning. A queer groom. He may keep Kit Ines from drink, he's one of you men, and rides

over anything in his way. I can't speak about it; I could swear it before a judge, from what I know. Those

Rundles at that inn don't hear anything it suits him to do. All the people down in those parts are slaves to him.

And I thought he was a real St. George before,yes, ready I was to kiss the ground his feet crossed. If you

could, it's Chinningfold near where Admiral Fakenham lives, down Hampshire way. Her friends ought to

hear what's happened to her. They'll find her in a queer place. She might go to the minister's. I believe she's

Gower pledged his word to start for Chinningfold early as the light next day. He liked the girl the better, in an

amicable fashion, now that his nerves had got free of the transient spell of her kettle tonethe hardly varied

one note of a heart boiling with sisterly devotion to a misused stranger of her sex;and, after the way of his

race, imagination sprang up in him, at the heels of the quieted senses, releasing him from the personal and

He thought of Carinthia, with full vision of her. Some wrong had been done, or some violation of the right, to

guess from the girl Madge's molten words in avoidance of the very words. It impliedthough it might be but

one of Love's shrewder discordssuch suspected traitorous dealing of a man with their sister woman as

makes the world of women all woman toward her. They can be that, and their being so illuminates their

But our uninformed philosopher was merely picking up scraps of sheddings outside the dark wood of the

mystery they were to him, and playing imagination upon them. This primary element of his nature soon

enthroned his chosen lady above their tangled obscurities. Beneath her tranquil beams, with the rapture of the

knowledge that her name on earth was Livia, he threaded East London's thoroughfares, on a morning when

day and night were made one by fog, to journey down to Chinningfold, by coach, in the service of the

younger Countess of Fleetwood, whose right to the title he did not doubt, though it directed surprise

MONEY of his father's enabled Gower to take the coach; and studies in fog, from the specked brown to the

woolly white and the dripping torn, were proposed to the traveller, whose preference of Nature's face did not

arrest his observation of her domino and petticoats; across which blank sheets he curiously read backward,

that he journeyed by the aid of his father's hardearned, ungrudged piece of gold. Without it, he would have

been useless in this case of need. The philosopher could starve with equanimity, and be the stronger. But one

had, it seemed here clearly, to put on harness and trudge along a line, if the unhappy were to have one's help.

Gradual experiences of his business among his fellows were teaching an exercised mind to learn in regions

The study of gout was offered at Chinningfold. Admiral Fakenham's butler refused at first to take a name to

his master. Gower persisted, stating the business of his mission; and in spite of the very suspicious glib good

English spoken by a man wearing such a hat and suit, the butler was induced to consult Mrs. Carthew.

She sprang up alarmed. After having seen the young lady happily married and off with her lordly young

husband, the arrival of a messenger from the bride gave a stir the wrong way to her flowing recollections; the

scenes and incidents she had smothered under her love of the comfortable stood forth appallingly. The

messenger, the butler said, was no gentleman. She inspected Gower and heard him speak. An anomaly had

come to the house; for he had the language of a gentleman, the appearance of a nondescript; he looked

indifferent, he spoke sympathetically; and he was frank as soon as the butler was out of hearing. In return for

the compliment, she invited him to her sittingroom. The story of the young countess, whom she had seen

driven away by her husband from the church in a coach and four, as being now destitute, praying to see her

friends, in the Whitechapel of Londonthe noted haunt of thieves and outcasts, bankrupts and the

abandoned; set her asking for the first time, who was the man with dreadful countenance inside the coach? A

previously disregarded horror of a man. She went trembling to the admiral, though his health was delicate, his

temper excitable. It was, she considered, an occasion for braving the doctor's interdict.

Gower was presently summoned to the chamber where Admiral Fakenham reclined on cushions in an edifice

of an armchair. He told a plain tale. Its effect was to straighten the admiral's back, and enlarge in grey glass

a pair of seablue eyes. And, "What's that? Whitechapel?" the admiral exclaimed,at high pitch, far above

his understanding. The particulars were repeated, whereupon the sickroom shook with, "Greengrocer?" He

stunned himself with another of the monstrous points in his pet girl's honeymoon: "A prizefight?"

To refresh a saving incredulity, he took a closer view of the messenger. Gower's habiliments were those of

the "queer fish," the admiral saw. But the meeting at Carlsruhe was recalled to him, and there was a worthy

effort to remember it. "Prize fight! . . . Greengrocer! . . . Whitechapel!" he rang the changes rather more

"Disappeared? Plays the man of his word, then plays the madman! Prizefight the first day of her

"Her brother's travelling somewhere in the Pyrenees married my daughter. She has an uncle, a hermit." He

became pale. "I must do it. The rascal insults us all. Flings her off the day he married her! It's a slap in the

face to all of us. You are acquainted with the lady, sir. Would you call her a red haired girl?"

"She has the eyes for a man to swear by. I feel the loss of her, I can tell you. She was wine and no penalty to

me. Is she much broken under it?if I'm to credit . . . I suppose I must. It floors me."

Admiral Baldwin's frosty stare returned on him. Gower caught an image of it, as comparable, without much

"To be sure, my poor dear! Who could have guessed when she left my house she was on her way to a

prizefight and a greengrocer's in Whitechapel. But the dog's not mad, though his bite's bad; he's an eccentric

mongrel. He wants the whip; ought to have had it regularly from his first breeching. He shall whistle for her

when he repents; and he will, mark me. This gout here will be having a snap at the vitals if I don't start

The admiral stretched his hand for an arm to give support, stood, and dropped into the chair, signifying a fit

Before the stupor had passed, Mrs. Carthew entered, anxious lest the admittance of a messenger of evil to her

invalid should have been an error of judgment. The butler had argued it with her. She belonged to the list of

persons appointed to cut life's thread when it strains, their general kindness being so liable to misdirection.

Gower left the room and went into the garden. He had never seen a death; and the admiral's peculiar pallor

intimated events proper to days of cold mist and a dripping stillness. How we go, was the question among his

The fog down a wet laurelwalk contracted his mind with the chilling of his blood, and he felt that he would

have to see the thing if he was to believe in it. Of course he believed, but life throbbed rebelliously, and a

picture of a desk near a lively firegrate, books and pen and paper, and a piece of writing to be approved of

by the Hesper of ladies, held ground with a pathetic heroism against the inevitable. He got his wits to the

front by walking faster; and then thought of the young countess and the friend she might be about to lose. She

could number her friends on her fingers. Admiral Fakenham's exclamations of the name of the place where

she now was, conveyed an inky idea of the fall she had undergone. Counting her absent brother, with himself,

his father, and the two Whitechapel girls, it certainly was an unexampled fall, to say of her, that they and

those two girls had become by the twist of circumstances the most serviceable of her friends.

Her husband was the unriddled riddle we have in the wealthy young lord,burning to possess, and making

tatters of all he grasped, the moment it was his own. Glints of the devilish had shot from him at the

gamingtables,fine haunts for the study of our lower man. He could be magnificent in generosity; he had

little humaneness. He coveted beauty in women hungrily, and seemed to be born hostile to them; or so Gower

judged by the light of the later evidence on unconsidered antecedent observations of him. Why marry her to

cast her off instantly? The crude philosopher asked it as helplessly as the admiral. And, further, what did the

girl Madge mean by the drop of her voice to a hum of enforced endurance under injury, like the furnace

behind an iron door? Older men might have understood, as he was aware; he might have guessed, only he had

Dame Gossip boils. Her one idea of animation is to have her dramatis person� in violent motion, always the

biggest foremost; and, indeed, that is the way to make them credible, for the wind they raise and the

succession of collisions. The fault of the method is, that they do not instruct; so the breath is out of them

before they are put aside; for the uninstructive are the humanly deficient: they remain with us like the

tolerated old aristocracy, which may not govern, and is but socially seductive. The deuteragonist or secondary

person can at times tell us more of them than circumstances at furious heat will help them to reveal; and the

Dame will have him only as an indexpost. Hence her endless ejaculations over the mystery of Life, the

inscrutability of character,in a plain world, in the midst of such readable people! To preserve Romance (we

exchange a sky for a ceiling if we let it go), we must be inside the heads of our people as well as the hearts,

more than shaking the kaleidoscope of hurried spectacles, in days of a growing activity of the head.

Gower Woodseer could not know that he was drawn on to fortune and the sight of his Hesper by Admiral

Fakenham's order that the visitor was to stay at his house until he should be able to quit his bed, and journey

with him to London, doctor or no doctor. The doctor would not hear of it. The admiral threatened it every

night for the morning, every morning for the night; and Gower had to submit to postponements balefully

affecting his linen. Remonstrance was not to be thought of; for at a mere show of reluctance the courtly

admiral flushed, frowned, and beat the bed where he lay, a gouty volcano. Gower's one shirt was passing

through the various complexions, and had approached the Nubian on its way to negro. His natural candour

checked the downward course. He mentioned to Mrs. Carthew, with incidental gravity, on a morning at

breakfast, that this article of his attire "was beginning to resemble London snow." She was amused; she

She then remembered the daily increase of stiffness in his figure: and a reflection upon his patient waiting,

and simpleness, and lexicographer speech to expose his minor needs, touched her unused sense of humour on

In consequence, she spoke of him with a pleading warmth to the Countess Livia, who had come down to see

the admiral "concerning an absurd but annoying rumour running over London." Gower was out for a walk.

He knew of the affair, Mrs. Carthew said, for an introduction to her excuses of his clothing.

"But I know the man," said Livia. "Lord Fleetwood picked him up somewhere, and brought him to us.

Having but a weak vocabulary to defend a delicate position, Mrs. Carthew stuttered into evasions, after the

way of illarmed persons; and naming herself a stranger to the circumstances, she feebly suggested that the

admiral ought not to be disturbed before the doctor's next visit; Mr. Woodseer had been allowed to sit by his

bed yesterday only for ten minutes, to divert him with his talk. She protected in this wretched manner the

poor gentleman she sacrificed and emitted such a smell of secrecy, that Livia wrote three words on her card,

for it to be taken to Admiral Baldwin at once. Mrs. Carthew supplicated faintly; she was unheeded.

The Countess of Fleetwood mounted the stairsto descend them with the knowledge of her being the

Dowager Countess of Fleetwood! Henrietta had spoken of the Countess of Fleetwood's hatred of the title of

Dowager. But when Lady Fleetwood had the fact from the admiral, would she forbear to excite him? If she

repudiated it, she would provoke him to fire "one of his broadsides," as they said in the family, to assert it;

and that might exhaust him; and there was peril in that. And who was guilty? Mrs. Carthew confessed her

guilt, asking how it could have been avoided. She made appeal to Gower on his return, transfixing him.

Not only is he no philosopher who has an idol, he has to learn that he cannot think rationally; his due sense of

weight and measure is lost, the choice of his thoughts as well. He was in the house with his devoutly, simply

worshipped, pearl of women, and his whole mind fell to work without ado upon the extravagant height of the

admiral's shirtcollar cutting his ears. The very beating of his heart was perplexed to know whether it was for

rapture or annoyance. As a result he was but histrionically master of himself when the Countess Livia or the

She received his bow; she directed Mrs. Carthew to have the doctor summoned immediately. The remorseful

"Admiral Fakenham is very ill, Mr. Woodseer, he has had distracting news. Oh, no, the messenger is not

blamed. You are Lord Fleetwood's friend and will not allow him to be prejudged. He will be in town shortly.

I know him well, you know him; and could you hear him accused of crueltyand to a woman? He is the soul

of chivalry. So, in his way, is the admiral. If he were only more patient! Let us wait for Lord Fleetwood's

version. I am certain it will satisfy me. The admiral wishes you to step up to him. Be very quiet; you will be;

consent to everything. I was unaware of his condition: the things I heard were incredible. I hope the doctor

Admiral Baldwin lay in his bed, submitting to a nursewoman sign of extreme exhaustion. He plucked

strength from the sight of Gower and bundled the woman out of the room, muttering: "Kill myself? Not half

so quick as they'd do it. I can't rest for that Whitechapel of yours. Please fetch pen and paper: it's a letter."

The dictation of it came in starts. At one moment it seemed as if life's ending shook the curtains on our stage

and [they] were about to lift. An old friend in the reader of the letter would need no excuse for its jerky

brevity. It said that his pet girl, Miss Kirby, was married to the Earl of Fleetwood in the first week of last

month, and was now to be found at a shop No. 45 Longways, Whitechapel; that the writer was ill, unable to

stir; that he would be in London within eightandforty hours at furthest. He begged Lady Arpington to send

down to the place and have the young countess fetched to her, and keep her until he came.

"Yes, and write `miracles happen when the devil's abroad' done it!" he said, sinking back. "Now seal,

He sighed, as it were the sound of his very last; he lay like a sleeper twitched by a dream. There had been a

scene with Livia. The dictating of the letter took his remainder of strength out of him.

Gower called in the nurse, and went downstairs. He wanted the address of Lady Arpington's town house.

"You have a letter for her?" said Livia, and held her hand for it in a way not to be withstood.

A slight convulsion of the frame struck the admiral's shirt collar at his ears; it virtually prostrated him under

foot of a lady so benign in overlooking the spectacle he presented. Still, he considered; he had wits alive

"Say that it is, then. It is quite safe with me. It may be important that it should not be delivered. Are you not

Lord Fleetwood's friend? Lady Arpington is not so very, very prominent in the list with you and me. Besides,

I don't think she has come to town yet. She generally sees out the end of the hunting season. Leave the letter

to me: it shall go. You, with your keen observation missing nothing, have seen that my uncle has not his

whole judgment at present. There are two sides to a case. Lord Fleetwood's friend will know that it would be

unfair to offer him up to his enemies while he is absent. Things going favourably here, I drive back to town

They talked of Baden. His honourable surrender of her defeated purse was a subject for gentle humour with

her, venturesome compliment with him. He spoke well; and though his hands were clean of Sir Meeson

Corby's reproach of them, the caricature of presentable men blushed absurdly and seemed uneasy in his

monstrous collar. The touching of him again would not be required to set him pacing to her steps. His hang of

the head testified to the unerring stamp of a likeness Captain Abrane could affix with a stroke: he looked the

fiddler over his bow, playing wonderfully to conceal the crack of a string. The merit of being one of her army

Gower deferred the further mention of the letter until a visit to the admiral's chamber should furnish an

excuse; and he had to wait for it. Admiral Baldwin's condition was becoming ominous. He sent messages

downstairs by the doctor, forbidding his guest's departure until they two could make the journey together next

day. The tortured and blissful young man, stripped of his borrowed philosopher's cloak, hung conscience

ridden in this delicious bower, which was perceptibly an antechamber of the vaults, offering him the study he

THE report of Admiral Baldwin Fakenham as having died in the arms of a stranger visiting the house, hit

nearer the mark than usual. He yielded his last breath as Gower Woodseer was lowering him to his pillow,

shortly after a husky whisper of the letter to Lady Arpington; and that was one of Gower's crucial trials. It

condemned him, for the pacifying of a dying man, to the murmur and shuffle, which was a lie; and the lie

burnt him, contributed to the brand on his race. He and his father upheld a solitary bare staff, where the

Cambrian flag had flown, before their people had been trampled in mire, to do as the worms. His loathing of

any shadow of the lie was a protest on behalf of Welsh blood against an English charge, besides the passion

for spiritual cleanliness: without which was no comprehension, therefore no enjoyment, of Nature possible to

He begged the countess to let him have the letter; he held to the petition, with supplications; he spoke of his

pledged word, his honour; and her countenance did not deny to such an object as she beheld the right to a

sense of honour. "We all have the sentiment, I hope, Mr. Woodseer," she said, stupefying the worshipper,

who did not see it manifested. There was a look of gentle intimacy, expressive of common grounds between

them, accompanying the dead words. Mistress of the letter, and the letter safe under lock, the admiral dead,

she had not to bestow a touch of her hand on his coatsleeve in declining to return it. A face languidly and

benevolently querulous was bent on him, when he, so clever a man, resumed his very silly petition.

She was moon out of cloud at a change of the theme. Gower journeyed to London without the letter,

intoxicated, and conscious of poison; enamoured of it, and straining for health. He had to reflect at the

journey's end, that he had picked up nothing on the road, neither a thing observed nor a thing imagined; he

The best help to health for him was a day in his father's house. We are perpetually at our comparisons of

ourselves with others; and they are mostly profitless; but the man carrying his religious light, to light the

darkest ways of his fellows, and keeping good cheer, as though the heart of him ran a mountain water through

the grimy region, plucked at Gower with an envy to resemble him in practice. His philosophy, too,

reproached him for being outshone. Apart from his philosophy, he stood confessed a bankrupt; and it had

dwindled to near extinction. Adoration of a woman takes the breath out of philosophy. And if one had only to

say sheer donkey, he consenting to be driven by her! One has to say worse in this case; for the words are, liar

Carinthia's attitude toward his father conduced to his emulous respect for the old man, below whom, and

indeed below the roadway of ordinary principles hedged with dull texts, he had strangely fallen. The sight of

her lashed him. She made it her business or it was her pleasure to go the rounds beside Mr. Woodseer visiting

his poor people. She spoke of the scenes she witnessed, and threw no stress on the wretchedness, having only

the wish to assist in ministering. Probably the great wretchedness bubbling over the place blunted her feeling

of loss at the word of Admiral Baldwin's end; her bosom sprang up: "He was next to father," was all she said;

and she soon reverted to this and that house of the lodgings of poverty. She had descended on the world.

There was of course a world outside Whitechapel, but Whitechapel was hot about her; the nests of misery, the

As to the place itself, she had no judgement to pronounce, except that: "They have no mornings here;" and

the childish remark set her quivering on her heights, like one seen through a tear, in Gower's memory. Scarce

anything of her hungry impatience to meet her husband was visible: she had come to London to meet him;

she hoped to meet him soon: before her brother's return, she could have added. She mentioned the goodness

of Sarah Winch in not allowing that she was a burden to support. Money and its uses had impressed her; the

quantity possessed by some, the utter need of it for the first of human purposes by others. Her speech was not

Speculation on the conduct of her husband, empty as it might be, was necessitated in Gower. He pursued it,

and listened to his father similarly at work: "A young lady fit for any station, the kindest of souls, a born

charitable human creature, void of pride, near in all she does and thinks to the Shaping Hand, why should her

husband forsake her on the day of their nuptials! She is most gracious; the simplicity of an infant. Can you

"Yes, I can imagine it, I'm doing it myself. I shall be doing it till I've written a letter and paid a visit."

He took a meditative stride or two in the room, thinking without revulsion of the Countess Livia under a

similitude of the bell of the plant henbane, and that his father had immunity from temptation because of the

insensibility to beauty. Out of which he passed to the writing of the letter to Lord Fleetwood, informing his

lordship that he intended immediately to deliver a message to the Marchioness of Arpington from Admiral

Baldwin Fakenham, in relation to the Countess of Fleetwood. A duty was easily done by Gower when he had

surmounted the task of conceiving his resolution to do it; and this task, involving an offence to the Lady Livia

and intrusion of his name on a nobleman's recollection, ranked next in severity to the chopping off of his

She was a florid, aquiline, loudvoiced lady, evidently having no seat for her wonderments, after his account

of the origin of his acquaintance with the admiral had quieted her suspicions. The world had only to stand

beside her, and it would hear what she had heard. She rushed to the conclusion that Lord Fleetwood had

"Really, really, that young man's freaks appear designed for the express purpose of heightening our

amazement!" she exclaimed. "He won't easily get beyond a wife in the east of London, at a shop; but there's

no knowing. Any wish of Admiral Baldwin Fakenham's I hold sacred. At least I can see for myself. You can't

tell me more of the facts? If Lord Fleetwood's in town, I will call him here at once. I will drive down to this

"Perfect breeding, you say?" Lady Arpington was reduced to a murmur. She considered the speaker: his

outlandish garb, his unprotesting selfpossession. He spoke good English by habit, her ear told her. She was

of an eminence to judge of a man impartially, even to the sufferance of an opinion from him, on a subject that

lesser ladies would have denied to his clothing. Outwardly simple, naturally frank, though a tangle of the

complexities inwardly, he was a touchstone for true aristocracy, as the humblest who bear the main elements

of it must be. Certain humorous turns in his conversation won him an amicable smile when he bowed to

One day later the earl arrived in town, read Gower Woodseer's brief words, and received the consequently

expected summons, couched in a great lady's plain imperative. She was connected with his family on the

He went obediently; not unwillingly, let the deputed historian of the Marriage, turning over documents, here

say. He went to Lady Arpington disposed for marital humaneness and jogtrot harmony, by condescension;

equivalent to a submitting to the drone of an incessant psalm at the drum of the ear. He was, in fact, rather

more than inclined that way. When very young, at the age of thirteen, a mood of religious fervour had

spiritualized the dulness of Protestant pew and pulpit for him. Another fit of it, in the Roman Catholic

direction, had proposed, during his latest dilemma, to relieve him of the burden of his pledged word. He had

plunged for a short space into the rapturous contemplation of a monastic life"the clean soul for the

macerated flesh," as that fellow Woodseer said once: and such as his friend, the Roman Catholic Lord Feltre,

moodily talked of getting in his intervals. He had gone down to a young and novel trial establishment of

English penitents in the forest of a Midland county, and had watched and envied, and seen the escape from a

lifelong bondage to the "beautiful Gorgon," under cover of a white flannel frock. The world pulled hard, and

But there was a plea on behalf of this woman. The life she offered might have psalmic iteration; the dead

monotony of it in prospect did, nevertheless, exorcise a devil. Carinthia promised, it might seem, to chase and

keep the black beast out of him permanently, as she could, he now conceived: for since the day of the

marriage with her, the devil inhabiting him had at least been easier, "up in a corner."

He held an individual memory of his bride, roseveiled, secret to them both, that made them one, by

subduing him. For it was a charm; an actual feminine, an unanticipated personal, charm; past reach of tongue

to name, wordless in thought. There, among the folds of the incense vapours of our heart's holy of holies, it

hung; and it was rare, it was distinctive of her, and alluring, if one consented to melt to it, and accepted for

Oh, but no mere devil by title!a very devil. It was alert and frisky, flushing, filling the thin cold idea of

Henrietta at a thought; and in the thought it made Carinthia's intimate charm appear as no better than a thing

to enrich a beggar, while he knew that kings could never command the charm. Not love, only the bathing in

Henrietta's incomparable beauty and the desire to be, desire to have been, the casket of it, broke the world to

tempest and lightnings at a view of Henrietta the married womanmarried to the brother of the woman

calling him husband:"It is my husband." The young tyrant of wealth could have avowed that he did not

love Henrietta; but not the less was he in the swing of a whirlwind at the hint of her loving the man she had

She? That Henrietta is one of the creatures who love pleasure, love flattery, love their beauty: they cannot

Now, if the fact were declared and attested, if her shallowness were seen proved, one might get free of the

devil she plants in the breast. Absolutely to despise her would be release, and it would allow of his tasting

Carinthia's charm, reluctantly acknowledged; not "money of the country" beside that golden Henrietta's.

Yet who can say?women are such deceptions. Often their fairest, apparently sweetest, when brought to the

keenest of the tests, are graceless; or worse, artificially consonant; in either instance barren of the poetic.

Thousands of the confidently expectant among men have been unbewitched; a lamentable process; and the

grimly reticent and the loudly discursive are equally eloquent of the pretty general disillusion. How they

loathe and tear the mask of the sham attraction that snatched them to the hag yoke, and fell away to show its

grisly horrors within the round of the month, if not the second enumeration of twelve by the clock! Fleetwood

had heard certain candid seniors talk, delivering their minds in superior appreciation of unpretentious boor

wenches, nature's products, not esteemed by him. Well, of a truth, she"Red Hair and Rugged Brows," as

the fellow Woodseer had called her, in alternation with "Mountain Face to Sun"she at the unveiling was

gentle, surpassingly; graceful in the furnace of the trial. She wore through the critic ordeal his burning

sensitiveness to grace and delicacy cast about a woman, and was rather better than not withered by it.

On the borders between maidenly and wifely, she, a thing of flesh like other daughters of earth, had

impressed her sceptical lord, inclining to contempt of her and detestation of his bargain, as a flitting hue,

ethereal, a transfiguration of earthliness in the core of the earthly furnace. And how?but that it must have

been the naked shining forth of her character, startled to show itself:"It is my husband":it must have

The love that they versify, and strum on guitars, and go crazy over, and end by roaring at as the delusion; this

common bloom of the ripeness of a season; this would never have utterly captured a sceptic, to vanquish him

in his mastery, snare him in her surrender. It must have been the veritable passion: a flame kept alive by

vestal ministrants in the yew wood of the forest of Old Romance; planted only in the breasts of very

favourite maidens. Love had eyes, love had a voice that night,love was the explicable magic lifting

terrestrial to seraphic. Though, true, she had not Henrietta's golden smoothness of beauty. Henrietta,

illumined with such a love, would outdo all legends, all dreams of the tale of love. Would she? For credulous

men she would be golden coin of the currency. She would not have a particular wild flavour: charm as of the

running doe that has taken a dart and rolls an eye to burst the hunter's heart with pity.

Fleetwood went his way to Lady Arpington almost complacently, having fought and laid his wilder self. He

might be likened to the doctor's patient entering the chemist's shop, with a prescription for a drug of healing

virtue, upon which the palate is as little consulted as a robustious lollypop boy in the household of ceremonial

parents, who have rung for the troop of their orderly domestics to sit in a row and hearken the intonation of

THE bow, the welcome, and the introductory remarks passed rapidly as the pull at two sides of a curtain

After the names of Admiral Baldwin and "the Mr. Woodseer," the name of Whitechapel was mentioned by

"Ah, so far, then, I have to instruct you," she said, observing the young earl. "I drove down there yesterday. I

saw the lady calling herself Countess of Fleetwood. By right? She was a Miss Kirby."

"She has the right," Fleetwood said, standing well up out of a discharge of musketry.

"Marriage not contested. You knew of her being in that place? I can't describe it."

London's frontier of barbarism was named for him again, and in a tone to penetrate.

"The coming out of it! . . . However, I understand her story, that she travelled from a village inn, where she

had been left without resources. She waited weeks; I forget how many. She has a description of maid in

attendance on her. She came to London to find her husband. You were at the mines, we heard. Her one desire

is to meet her husband. But, goodness! Fleetwood, why do you frown? You acknowledge the marriage, she

has the name of the church; she was married out of that old Lord Levellier's house. You drove herI won't

repeat the flighty business. You left her, and she did her best to follow you. Will the young men of our time

not learn that life is no longer a game when they have a woman for partner in the match! You don't complain

of her flavour of a foreign manner? She can't be so very . . . Admiral Baldwin's daughter has married her

brother; and he is a military officer. She has germs of breeding, wants only a little rub of the world to smooth

Fleetwood had the clang of all the bells of London chiming Whitechapel at him in his head, and he betrayed

the irritated tyrant ready to decree fire and sword, for the defence or solace of his tender sensibilities.

"It's a thing to mend, as well as one can," Lady Arpington said. "I am not inquisitive: you had your reasons or

chose to act without any. Get her away from that place. She won't come to me unless it's to meet her husband.

Ah, well, temper does not solve your problem; husband you are, if you married her. We'll leave the husband

undiscussed: with this reserve, that it seems to me men are now beginning to play the misunderstood."

"I hope they know themselves better," said Fleetwood; and he begged for the name and number of the house

in the Whitechapel street, where she who was discernibly his enemy, and the deadliest of enemies, had now

Her immediate rush to that place, the fixing of herself there for an assault on him, was a move worthy the

daughter of the rascal Old Buccaneer; it compelled to urgent measures. He, as he felt horribly in pencilling

her address, acted under compulsion; and a woman prodded the goad. Her mask of ingenuousness was flung

away for a look of craft, which could be power; and with her changed aspect his tolerance changed to hatred.

"A shop," Lady Arpington explained for his better direction: "potatoes, vegetable stuff. Honest people, I am

to believe. She is indifferent to her food, she says. She works, helping one of their ministersone of their

denominations: heaven knows what they call themselves! Anything to escape from the Church! She's likely

to become a Methodist. With Lord Feltre proselytizing for his Papist creed, Lord Pitscrew a declared

Mohammedan, we shall have a pretty English aristocracy in time. Well, she may claim to belong to it now.

She would not be persuaded against visitations to pestiferous hovels. What else is there to do in such a place?

She goes about catching diseases to avoid bilious melancholy in the dark back room of a small greengrocer's

shop in Whitechapel. There you have the word for the Countess of Fleetwood's present address."

"I am indebted to your ladyship for the information," he said, and maintained his rigidity.

"I am obliged to ask you whether you intend to act on it at once. The admiral has gone; I am in some sort

deputed as a guardian to her, and I warn youvery well, very well. In your own interests, it will be. If she is

"She has baptized herself with it already, I imagine," said Fleetwood. "She will have Esslemont to live in."

"If I may hazard a guess, she is unlikely to come to terms without a previous interview. She is bent on

"I am to be subjected to further annoyance, or she will take the name of the place she at present inhabits, and

"She had a father famous over England as the Old Buccaneer, and is a diligent reader of his book of

"Dear me! Then KirbyCaptain Kirby! I remember. That's her origin, is it?" the great lady cried, illumined.

"My mother used to talk of the Cressett scandal. Old Lady Arpington, too. At any rate, it ended in their

"I detest such a tone of speaking. Speaking as you do now married to the daughter? You are not yourself,

"Quite, ma'am, let me assure you. Otherwise the Kirby Cressetts would be dictating to me from the muzzle

"You don't improve as you proceed. I tell you this, you'll not have me for a friend. You have your troops of

satellites; but take it as equal to a prophecy, you won't have London with you; and you'll hear of Lord

"Well, I may be mistaken,I fancied it before I knew of the pair she springs from: you won't get her consent

to anything without your consenting to meet her. Surely it's the manlier way. It might be settled for

He left no friend thinking over the riddle of his conduct. She was a loudvoiced lady, given to strike out

phrases. The "Whitechapel Countess" of the wealthiest nobleman of his day was heard by her on London's

wagging tongue. She considered also that he ought at least to have propitiated her; he was in the position

requiring of him to do something of the kind, and he had shown instead the dogged pride which calls for a

whip. Fool as he must have been to go and commit himself to marriage with a girl of whom he knew nothing

or little, the assumption of pride belonged to the order of impudent disguises intolerable to behold and not, in

Notwithstanding a dislike of the Dowager Countess of Fleetwood, Lady Arpington paid Livia an afternoon

visit; and added thereby to the stock of her knowledge and the grounds of her disapprobation.

Down in Whitechapel, it was known to the Winch girls and the Woodseers that Captain Kirby and his wife

had spent the bitterest of hours in vainly striving to break their immovable sister's will to remain there.

At the teatime of simple people, who make it a meal, Gower's appetite for the homemade bread of Mary

Jones was checked by the bearer of a short note from Lord Fleetwood. The halfdozen lines were cordial,

breathing of their walk in the Austrian highlands, and naming a renowned city hotel for dinner that day, the

"But we are man to man, so there's no `No' between us two," the note said, reviving a scene of rosy crag and

pine forest, where there had been philosophical fun over the appropriate sexes of those our most important

fightingultimately, we will hope, to be unitedsyllables, and the when for men, the when for women, to

Under the circumstances, Gower thought such a piece of writing to him magnanimous.

Both had the desire; and Gower's reply was the yes, our brave male word, supposed to be not so

compromising to men in the employment of it as a form of acquiescence rather than insistent pressure.

There are marriages by the thousand every day of the year that is not consecrated to prayer for the forgiveness

of our sins, the Old Buccaneer, writing it with simple intent, says, by way of preface to a series of Maxims for

This was a marriage high as the firmament over common occurrences, black as Erebus to confound; it

involved the wreck of expectations, disastrous eclipse of a sovereign luminary in the splendour of his rise,

Phaethon's descent to the Shades through a smoking and a crackling world. Asserted here, verified there, the

rumour gathered volume, and from a serpent of vapour resolved to sturdy concrete before it was tangible.

Contradiction retired into corners, only to be swept out of them. For this marriage, abominable to hear of, was

of so wonderful a sort, that the story filled the mind, and the discrediting of the story threatened the great

For he, the planet Cr*sus of his time, recently, scarce later than last night, a glorious object of the

midheavens above the market, has been enveloped, caught, gobbled up by one of the nameless little witches

riding after dusk the way of the wind on broomsticksby one of them! She caught him like a fly in the hand

off a pane of glass, gobbled him with the customary facility of a pecking pullet.

There is the mystery of it. On his coming of age, that young man gave sign of his having a city head. He put

his guardians deliberately aside, had his lawyers and bailiffs and stewards thoroughly under control: managed

a particularly difficult stepmother; escaped the snares of her lovely cousin; and drove his team of

Always from his own offset, to his own ends. Never for another's dictation or beguilement. Never for a

woman. He was born with a suspicion of the sex. Poetry decorated women, he said, to lime and drag men in

There we are at hoodmanblind for the moment. Three counties claim the church; two ends of London.

Nor of beauty. She is a witch; ordinarily petticoated and not squeaking like a shrewmouse in her flights, but

not a whit less a moonshade witch. The kind is famous. Fairy tales and terrible romances tell of her; she is

just as much at home in life, and springs usually from the mire to enthral our knightliest. Is it a popular hero?

That is, if his people fail to attach him in legal bonds to a damsel of a corresponding birth on the day when he

Small is her need to be youngespecially if it is the man who is very young. She is the created among

women armed with the deadly instinct for the motive force in men, and shameless to attract it.

Selfrespecting women treat men as their tamed housemates. She blows the horn of the wild old forest,

irresistible to the animal. O the droop of the eyelids, the curve of a lip, the rustle of silks, the much heart, the

neat ankle; and the sparkling agreement, the reservethe motherly feminine petition that she may retain her

own small petted babe of an opinion, legitimate or not, by permission of superior authority!proof at once

of her intelligence and her appreciativeness. Her infinitesimal spells are seen; yet, despite experience, the

magnetism in their repulsive display is barely apprehended by sedate observers until the astounding capture is

proclaimed. It is visible enough then:and O men! O morals! If she can but trick the smallest bit in

Our present sample shows her to be young: she is young and a foreigner. Mr. Chumley Potts vouches for it.

Speaks foreign English. He thinks her more ninny than knave: she is the tool of a wily plotter, picked up off

the highway road by Lord Fleetwood as soon as he had her in his eye. Sir Meeson Corby wrings his frilled

hands to depict the horror of the hands of that tramp the young lord had her from. They afflict him

malariously still. The man, he says, the man as well was an infatuation, because he talks like a Dictionary

Cheap Jack, and may have had an education and dropped into vagrancy, owing to indiscretions. Lord

Fleetwood ran about in Germany repeating his remarks. But the man is really an accomplished violinist, we

hear. She dances the tambourine business. A sister of the man, perhaps, if we must be charitable. They are,

some say, a couple of Hungarian gypsies Lord F. found at a show and brought over to England, and soon had

it on his conscience that he ought to marry her, like the Quixote of honour that he is; which is equal to saying

The marriage is no longer disputable; poor Lady Fleetwood, whatever her faults as a stepmother, does no

longer deny the celebration of a marriage; though she might reasonably discredit any such story if he, on the

evening of the date of the wedding day, was at a ball, seen by her at the suppertable; and the next day he sat

among the Peers and voted against the Government, and then went down to his estates in Wales, being an

More and more wonderful, we hear that he drove his bride straight from the church to the field of a

prizefight, arranged for her special delectation. She dotes on seeing bloodshed and drinking champagne.

Young Mr. Mallard is our authority; and he says, she enjoyed it, and cheered the victor for being her

husband's man. And after the shocking exhibition, goodbye; the Countess of Fleetwood was left sole

occupant of a wayside inn, and may have learnt in her solitude that she would have been wise to feign

disgust; for men to the smallest degree cultivated are unable to pardon a want of delicacy in the woman who

So talked, so twittered, piped and croaked the London world over the early rumours of the marriage, this

Amazing Marriage; which it got to be called, from the number of items flocking to swell the wonder.

Ravens ravening by night, poised peregrines by day, provisionmerchants for the dispensing of dainty scraps

to tickle the ears, to arm the tongues, to explode reputations, those great ladies, the Ladies Endor, Eldritch,

and Cowry, fateful three of their period, avenged and scourged both innocence and naughtiness; innocence,

on the whole, the least, when their withering suspicion of it had hunted the unhappy thing to the bank of

Ophelia's ditch. Mallard and Chumley Potts, Captain Abrane, Sir Meeson Corby, Lord Brailstone, were

plucked at and rattled, put to the blush, by a pursuit of inquiries conducted with beaks. Highnosed dames

will surpass eminent judges in their temerity on the borderline where Ahem sounds the warning note to

curtained decency. The courtly M. de St. Ombre had to stand confused. He, however, gave another version of

Captain Abrane's "fiddler," and precipitated the great ladies into the reflection, that French gentlemen, since

the execrable French Revolution, have lost their proper sense of the distinctions of Class. Homme d'esprit,

applied to a roving adventurer, a scarce other than vagabond, was either an undiscriminating epithet or else a

Dexterous contriver, he undoubtedly is. Lady Cowry has it from Sir Meeson Corby, who had it from the poor

dowager, that Lord Fleetwood has installed the man in his house and sits him at the opposite end of his table;

fished him up from Whitechapel, where the countess is left serving oranges at a small fruitshop. With her

own eyes, Lady Arpington saw her there; and she can't be got to leave the place unless her husband drives his

coach down to fetch her. That he declines to do; so she remains the Whitechapel Countess, all on her hind

heels against the offer of a shilling of her husband's money, if she's not to bring him to his knees; and goes

about at night with a low Methodist singing hymns along those dreadful streets, while Lord Fleetwood gives

gorgeous entertainments. One signal from the man he has hired, and he stops drinking; he will stop speaking

as soon as the man's mouth is open. He is under a complete fascination, attributable, some say, to passes of

For it cannot be simply his violin playing. They say he was a pupil of a master of the dark art in Germany,

and can practise on us to make us think his commonest utterances extraordinarily acute and precious. Lord

Fleetwood runs round quoting him to everybody, quite ridiculously. But the man's influence is sufficient to

induce his patron to drive down and fetch the Whitechapel Countess home in state, as she insists if the man

Totally the contrary, Lady Arpington declares!the man is a learned man, formerly a Professor of English

Literature in a German University, and no connection of the Whitechapel countess whatever, a chance

acquaintance at the most. He operates on Lord Fleetwood with doses of German philosophy; otherwise, a

harmless creature; and has consented to wash and dress. It is my lord who has had the chief influence. And

the Countess Livia now backs him in maintaining that there is nowhere a more honest young man to be

As for the Whitechapel Countess . . . the whole story of the Old Buccaneer and Countess Fanny was retold,

and it formed a terrific halo, presage of rains and hurricane tempest, over the girl the young earl had

incomprehensibly espoused to discard. Those two had a son and a daughter born abroad:in wedlock, we

trust. The girl may be as wild a one as the mother. She has a will as determined as her husband's. She is

offered Esslemont, the earl's Kentish mansion, for a residence, and she will none of it until she has him down

in the east of London on his knees to entreat her. The injury was deep on one side or the other. It may be

almost surely prophesied that the two will never come together. Will either of them deal the stroke for

Meanwhile Lord Fleetwood and his Whitechapel Countess composed the laugh of London. Straightway

Invention. the violent propagator, sprang from his shades at a call of the great world's appetite for more, and,

rushing upon stationary Fact, supplied the required. Marvel upon marvel was recounted. The mixed origin of

Always the shout for more produced it. She and her band of Whitechapel boys were about in ambush to

waylay the earl wherever he went. She stood knocking at his door through a whole night. He dared not lug

her before a magistrate for fear of exposure. Once, riding in the park with a troop of friends he had a young

woman pointed out to him, and her finger was levelled, and she cried: "There is the English nobleman who

He left town for the Island, and beheld his yacht sailing the Solent:my lady the countess was on board! A

pair of Tyrolese minstrels in the square kindled his enthusiasm at one of his dinners; he sent them a

sovereign; their humble, hearty thanks were returned to him in the none of Die Gr�fin von Fleetwood.

The Ladies Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry sifted their best. They let pass incredible stories: among others, that

she had sent cards to the nobility and gentry of the West End of London, offering to deliver sacks of potatoes

by newly established donkeycart at the doors of their residences, at so much per sack, bills quarterly; with

the postscript, Vive l'aristocratie! Their informant had seen a card, and the stamp of the Fleetwood

He has enemies, was variously said of the persecuted nobleman. But it was nothing worse than the parasite

that he had. This was the parasite's gentle treason. He found it an easy road to humour; it pricked the slug

fancy in him to stir and curl; gave him occasion to bundle and bustle his patron kindly. Abrane, Potts,

Mallard, and Sir Meeson Corby were personages during the town's excitement, besought for having

something to say. Petrels of the sea of tattle, they were buoyed by the hubbub they created, and felt the tipsy

happiness of being certain to rouse the laugh wherever they alighted. Sir Meeson Corby, important to himself

in an eminent degree, enjoyed the novel sense of his importance with his fellows. They crowded round the

He traced the miserable catastrophe in the earl's fortunes to the cunning of the rascal now sponging on

Fleetwood and trying to dress like a gentleman: a convicted tramp, elevated by the caprice of the young

nobleman he was plotting to ruin. Sir Meeson quoted Captain Abrane's latest effort to hit the dirty object's

name, by calling him "Fleetwood's Mr. Woodlouse." And was the rascal a sorcerer? Sir Meeson spoke of him

in the hearing of the Countess Livia, and she, previously echoing his disgust, corrected him sharply, and said:

"I begin to be of Russett's opinion, that his fault is his honesty." The rascal had won or partly won the

empress of her sex! This Lady Livia, haughtiest and most fastidious of our younger great dames, had become

the indulgent critic of the tramp's borrowed plumes! Nay, she would not listen to a depreciatory word on him

Perhaps, after all, of all places for an encounter between the Earl of Fleetwood and the countess, those vulgar

Gardens across the water, long since abandoned by the Fashion, were the most suitable. Thither one fair June

night, for the sake of showing the dowager countess and her beautiful cousin, the French nobleman, Sir

Meeson Corby, and others, what were the pleasures of the London lower orders, my lord had the whim to

conduct them,merely a parade of observation once round;the ladies veiled, the gentlemen with sticks,

and two servants following, one of whom, dressed in quiet black, like the peacefullest of parsons, was my

The party walked round the Gardens unmolested: nor have we grounds for supposing they assumed airs of

state in the style of a previous generation. Only, as it happened, a gentleman of the party was a wag; no less

than the famous, wellseasoned John Rose Mackrell, bent on amusing Mrs. KirbyLevellier, to hear her

lovely laughter; and his wit and his anecdotes, both inexhaustible, proved that, as he said, "a dried fish is no

stale fish, and a smoky flavour to an old chimney story will often render it more piquant to the taste than one

jumping fresh off the incident." His exact meaning in "smoky flavour" we are not to know; but whether that

M. de St. Ombre should witness the effect of English humour upon them, or that the ladies could permit

themselves to laugh, their voices accompanied the gentlemen in silvery volleys. There had been "Mackrell" at

Fleetwood's dinnertable; which was then a way of saying that dry throats made no count of the quantity of

champagne imbibed, owing to the fits Rose Mackrell caused. However, there was loud laughter as they

strolled, and it was noticed; and Fleetwood crying out, "Mackrell! Mackrell!" in delighted repudiation of the

wag's last sally, the cry of "Hooray, Mackrell!" was caught up by the crowd. They were not the primary

offenders, for loud laughter in an isolated party is bad breeding; but they had not the plea of a copious dinner.

So this affair began; inoffensively at the start, for my lord was goodhumoured about it.

Kit Ines, of the mercurial legs, must now give impromptu display of his dancing. He seized a partner, in the

manner of a Roman the Sabine, sure of pleasing his patron; and the maid, passing from surprise to merriment,

entered the quadrille perforce, all giggles, not without emulation, for she likewise had the passion for the

dance. Whereby it befell that the pair footed in a way to gather observant spectators; and if it had not been

that the man from whom the maid was willynilly snatched, conceived resentment, things might have passed

comfortably; for Kit's quips and cuts and high capers, and the Sunday gravity of the barge face while the legs

were at their impish trickery, double motion to the music, won the crowd to cheer. They conjectured him to

be a British sailor. But the destituted man said, sailor or no sailor,bos'en be hanged! he should pay for his

Honourably at the close of the quadrille, Kit brought her back; none the worse for it, he boldly affirmed, and

he thanked the man for the short loan of her. The man had an itch to strike. Choosing rather to be struck first,

he vented nasty remarks. My lord spoke to Kit and moved on. At the moment of the step, Rose Mackrell

uttered something, a waggery of some sort, heard to be forgotten, but of such instantaneous effect, that the

prompt and immoderate laugh succeeding it might reasonably be taken for a fling of scorn at himself, by an

injured man. They were a party; he therefore proceeded to make one, appealing to English sentiment and

right feeling. The blameless and repentant maid plucked at his coat to keep him from dogging the heels of the

"My lord," had been let fall by Kit Ines. Conjoined to "Mackrell," it rang finely and a trumpeting of "Lord

Mackrell" resounded. Lord Mackrell was asked for "more capers and not so much sauce." Various fish took

part in his title of nobility. The wag Mackrell continuing to be discreetly silent, and Kit Ines acting as a

pacific rearguard, the crowd fell in love with their display of English humour, disposed to the surly

satisfaction of a big street dog that has been appeased by a smaller one's total cessation of growls.

All might have gone well but for the sudden appearance of two figures of young women on the scene. They

fronted the advance of the procession. They wanted to have a word with Lord Mackrell. Not a bit of ithe

won't listen, turns away; and one of the pair slips round him. It's regular imploring: "my lord! my lord!"

O you naughty Surrey melodram villain of a Lord Mackrell! Listen to the young woman, you Mackrell, or

you'll get Billingsgate! Here's Mr. JigandReel behind here, says she's done him! By Gosh! What's up now?

One of the young ladies of the party ahead had rushed up to the young woman dodging to stand in Lord

Mackrell's way. The crowd pressed to see. Kit Ines and his mate shouldered them off. They performed an

envelopment of the gentlemen and ladies, including the two young women. Kit left his mate and ran to the

young woman hitherto the quieter of the two. He rattled at her. But she had a tongue of her own and she

Merely to hear, for no other reason, a peaceloving crowd of clerks and tradesmen, workmen and their girls,

young aspirants to the professions, nightlarks of different classes, both sexes, there in that place for simple

entertainment, animated simply by the spirit of English humour, contracted, so closing upon the Mackrell

party as to seem threatening to the most orderly and apprehensive member of it, who was the baronet, Sir

He was a man for the constables in town emergencies, and he shouted. "Cock Robin crowing" provoked a

jolly round of barking chaff. The noise in a dense ring drew Fleetwood's temper. He gave the word to Kit

Ines, and immediately two men dropped; a dozen staggered unhit. The fists worked right and left; such a

clearing of ground was never seen for sickle or scythe. And it was taken respectfully; for Science proclaimed

her venerable self in the style and the perfect sufficiency of the strokes. A bruiser delivered them. No shame

to back away before a bruiser. There was rather an admiring envy of the party claiming the nimble champion

on their side, until the very moderate lot of the Mackrells went stepping forward along the strewn path with

If they had walked it like gentlemen, they would have been allowed to get through. An aggressive minority,

and with Cock Robin squealing for constables in the midst, is that insolent upstart thing which howls to have

a lesson. The sticks were fallen on; bump came the mass. Kit Ines had to fight his way back to his mate, and

the couple scoured a clearish ring, but the gentlemen were at short thrusts, affable in tone, to cheer the spirits

of the ladies:"All right, my friend, you're a trifle mistaken, it's my stick, not yours." Therewith the wrestle

The one stick not pointed was wrenched from the grasp of Sir Meeson Corby; and by a woman, the young

woman who had accosted my lord; not a common young woman either, as she appeared when beseeching

him. Her stature rose to battle heights: she made play with Sir Meeson Corby's ebony stick, using it in one

hand as a dwarf quarterstaff to flail the sconces, then to dash the point at faces; and she being a woman, a girl,

perhaps a lady, her cool warrior method of cleaving way, without so much as tightening her lips, was found

notable; and to this degree (vouched for by Rose Mackrell, who heard it), that a fellow, rubbing his head,

cried: "Damn it all, she's clever, though!" She took her station beside Lord Fleetwood.

He had been as cool as she, or almost. Now he was maddened; she defended him, she warded and thrust for

him, only for him, to save him a touch; unasked, undesired, detested for the box on his ears of tomorrow's

public mockery, as she would be, overwhelming him with ridicule. Have you seen the kick and tug at the

straps of the mettled pony in stables that betrays the mishandling of him by his groom? Something so did

Fleetwood plunge and dart to be free of her, and his desperate soul cried out on her sticking to him like a

Welcome were the constables. His guineas winked at their chief, as fair women convey their meanings, with

no motion of eyelids; and the officers of the law knew the voice habituated to command, and answered two

words of his: "Right, my lord," smelling my lord in the unerring manner of those days. My lord's party were

escorted to the gates, not a little jeered; though they by no means had the worst of the tussle. But the puffing

indignation of Sir Meeson Corby over his battered hat and torn frill and buttons plucked from his coat, and

The ladies were spared the hearing of bad language. They, according to the joint testimony of M. de St.

Ombre and Mr. Rose Mackrell, comported themselves throughout as became the daughters of a warrior race.

Both gentlemen were emphatic to praise the unknown Britomart who had done such gallant service with Sir

Meeson's ebony wand. He was beginning to fuss vociferously about the loss of the sticka family stick,

gold headed, the family crest on it, priceless to the familywhen Mrs. KirbyLevellier handed it to him

"But where is she?" M. de St. Ombre said, and took the hint of Livia's touch on his arm in the dark.

He and the French gentleman understood that there had been a manifestation of the notorious Whitechapel

They were two; and a slowerwitted third was travelling to his ideas on the subject. Three men, witnesses of

a remarkable incident in connection with a boiling topic of current scandal, glaringly illustrative of it,

moreover,were unlikely to keep close tongues, even if they had been sworn to secrecy. Fleetwood knew it,

and he scorned to solicit them; an exaction of their idle vows would be merely the humiliation of him self. So

he tossed his dignity to recklessness, as the ultraconvivial give the last wink of reason to the winecup.

Persecuted as he was, nothing remained for him but the nethersublime of a statuesque desperation.

That was his feeling; and his way of cloaking it under light sallies at Sir Meeson and easy chat with Henrietta

made it visible to her, from its being the contrary of what the world might expect a proud young nobleman to

exhibit. She pitied him: she had done him some wrong. She read into him, too, as none else could. Seeing the

solitary tortures behind the pleasant social mask, she was drawn to partake of them; and the mask seemed

pathetic. She longed to speak a word in sympathy or relieve her bosom of tears. Carinthia had sunk herself,

was unpardonable, hardly mentionable. Any of the tales told of her might be credited after this! The

incorrigible cause of humiliation for everybody connected with her pictured, at a word of her name, the

crowd pressing and the London world acting audience. Livia spoke the name when they had reached their

house and were alone. Henrietta responded with the imperceptible shrug which is more eloquent than a cry to

tell of the most monstrous of loads. My lord, it was thought by the ladies, had directed his mown to convey

her safely to her chosen home, whence she might be expected very soon to be issuing and striking the gong of

LADIES who have the pride of delicate breeding are not more than rather violently hurled back on the

fortress it is, when one or other of the gross mishaps of circumstance may subject them to a shock: and this

happening in the presence of gentlemen, they are sustained by the within and the without to keep a smooth

countenance, however severe their affliction. Men of heroic nerve decline similarly to let explosions shake

them, though earth be shaken. Dragged into the monstrous grotesque of the scene at the Gardens, Livia and

Henrietta went through the ordeal, masking any signs that they were stripped for a flagellation. Only, the fair

cousins were unable to perceive a comic element in the scene: and if the world was for laughing, as their

instant apprehension foresaw it, the world was an ignoble beast. They did not discuss Carinthia's latest

craziness at night, hardly alluded to it while they were in the interjectory state.

Henrietta was Livia's guest, her husband having hurried away to Vienna: "To get money! money!" her angry

bluntness explained his absence, and dealt its blow at the sudden astounding poverty into which they had

fallen. She was compelled to practise an excessive, an incredible economy: "think of the smallest trifles!"

so that her Chillon travelled unaccompanied, they were separated. Her iterations upon money were the vile

constraint of an awakened interest and wonderment at its powers. She, the romantic Riette, banner of

chivalry, reader of poetry, struck a line between poor and rich in her talk of people, and classed herself with

the fallen and pinched; she harped on her slender means, on the enforced calculations preceding purchases,

on the living in lodgings; and that miserly Lord Levellier's indebtedness to Chillonlarge sums! and

Chillon's praiseworthy resolve to pay the creditors of her father's estate; and of how he travelled like a

common man, in consequence of the money he had given Janeyweakly, for her obstinacy was past

endurance; but her brother would not leave her penniless, and penniless she had been for weeks, because of

her stubborn resistance to the earlquite unreasonably, whether right or wrongin the foul retreat she had

chosen; apparently with a notion that the horror of it was her vantage ground against him: and though a single

sign of submission would place the richest purse in England at her disposal. "She refuses Esslemont! She

insists on his meeting her! No child could be so witless. Let him be the one chiefly or entirely to blame, she

might show a little tactfor her brother's sake! She loves her brother? No: deaf to him, to me, to every

It refreshed a phlegmatic lady's disposition for prophecy. Lovers abruptly tossed between wind and wave may

still be lovers, she knew: but they are, or the weaker of the two is, hard upon any third person who tugs at

them for subsistence or existence. The condition, if they are much beaten about, prepares true lovers, through

Livia supposed the novel economic pinches to be the cause of Henrietta's unwonted harsh judgment of her

sisterinlaw's misconduct, or the crude expression of it. She could not guess that Carinthia's unhappiness in

marriage was a spectre over the married happiness of the pair fretted by the conscience which told them they

had come together by doing much to bring it to pass. Henrietta could see herself less the culprit when she

After some repose, the cousins treated their horrible misadventure as a piece of history. Livia was cool; she

had not a husband involved in it, as Henrietta had; and London's hoarse laugh surely coming on them, spared

her the dread Henrietta suffered, that Chillon would hear; the most sensitive of men on any matter touching

"M. de St. Ombre is a tomb until he writes his Memoirs. I hold Sir Meeson under lock. But a spiced

incident,a notorious couple,an anecdotal witness to the scene,could you expect Mr. Rose Mackrell to

That relentless force impelling an anecdotist to slaughter families for the amusement of dinnertables, was

brought home to Henrietta by her prospect of being a victim; and Livia reminding her of the excessive

laughter at Rose Mackrell's anecdotes overnight, she bemoaned her having consented to go to those Gardens

"You went to please Russett, he to please you, and that wild cat to please herself," said Livia. "She haunts

his door, I suppose, and follows him, like a running footman. Every step she takes widens the breach. He

keeps his temper, yes, keeps his temper as he keeps his word, and one morning it breaks loose, and all that's

done has to be undone. It will bemust. That extravaganza, as she is called, is fatal, dogs him with

"My husband would yield to a woman what he would refuse to all the men in Europe and America," said

Henrietta; and she enjoyed her thrill of allegiance to her chivalrous lord and courtier.

"No very extraordinary specimen of a newly married man, who has won the Beauty of England and America

There cone a moisture on the eyelashes of the emotional young woman, from a touch of compassion for the

wealthy man who had wished to call her wife, and was condemned by her rejection of him to call another

"She thinks he loves her; it is pitiable, but she thinks it after the treatment she has had. She begs to see him

"And subdue him with a fit of weeping," Livia was moved to say by sight of the tear she hated. "It would

harden Russetton other eyes, too! Saltwater drops are like the forced agony scenes in a play: they bring

down the curtain, they don't win the critics. I heard her `my husband' and saw his face."

"You didn't hear a whimper with it," Henrietta said. "She's a mountain girl, not your city madam on the

boards. Chillon and I had her by each hand, implored her to leave that impossible Whitechapel, and she

trembled, not a drop was shed by her. I can; almost fancy privation and squalor have no terrors for Janey. She

sings to the people down there, nurses them. She might be occupying Esslemontour dream of an English

home! She is the destruction of the idea of romantic in connection with the name of marriage. I talk like a

simpleton. Janey upsets us all. My lord was only a little queer before he knew her. His Mr. Woodseer may be

encouraging her. You tell me the creature has a salary from him equal to your jointure."

"Be civil to the man while it lasts," Livid said, attentive to a degradation of tone in her cousin, formerly of

The beautiful young woman was reminded of her holiday in town. She brightened, and the little that it was,

and the meanness of the satisfaction, darkened her. Envy of the lucky adventurer Mr. Woodseer, on her

husband's behalf, grew horridly conscious for being reproved. So she plucked resolution to enjoy her holiday

and forget the contrasts of lifepalaces running profusion, lodgings hammered by duns; the pinch of poverty

distracting every simple look inside or out. There was no end to it, for her husband's chivalrous honour forced

him to undertake the payment of her father's heavy debts. He was right and admirable, it could not be

contested; but the prospect for them was a grinding gloom, an unrelieved drag, as of a coach at night on an

These were her sensations, and she found it diverting to be admired; admired by many while she knew herself

to be absorbed in the possession of her by one. It bestowed the before and after of her marriage. She felt she

was really, had rapidly become, the young woman of the world, armed with a husband, to take the flatteries

of men for the needed diversion they brought. None moved her; none could come near to touching the happy

insensibility of a wife who adored her husband, wrote to him daily, thought of him by the minute. Her former

worshippers were numerous at Livia's receptions; Lord Fleetwood, Lord Brailstone, and the rest. Odd to

reflect on they were the insubstantial but coveted wealth of the woman fallen upon poverty, ignoble

poverty! She could not discard her wealth. She wrote amusingly of them, and fully, vivacious descriptions, to

Chillon; hardly so much writing to him as entering her heart's barred citadel, where he resided at his ease,

heard everything that befell about her. If she dwelt on Lord Fleetwood's kindness in providing

entertainments, her object was to mollify Chillon's anger in some degree. She was doing her utmost to gratify

him, "for the purpose of paving a way to plead Janey's case." She was almost persuading herself she was

enjoying the remarks of his friend, confidant, secretary, or what not, Livia's worshipper, Mr. Woodseer, "who

does as he wills with my lord; directs his charities, his pleasures, his opinions, all because he is believed to

Henrietta wrote: "Situation unchanged. Janey still at that place"; and before the letter was posted, she and

Livia had heard from Gower Woodseer of the reported disappearance of the Countess of Fleetwood and her

maid. Gower's father had walked up from Whitechapel, bearing news of it to the earl, she said.

"He has driven down with my father," Gower said carelessly, ambiguously in the sound.

Troubled enough to desire the show of a corresponding trouble, Henrietta read at their faces.

The drama, he could inform her, was only too naked down there for disappearances to be common.

"She has her maid with her, a stouthearted girl. Both have courage. I don't think we need take measures just

Henrietta could have bitten her tongue for laying her open to the censure implied in his muteness. Janey

Women were an illegible manuscript, and ladies a closed book of the binding, to this raw philosopher, or he

would not so coldly have judged the young wife, anxious on her husband's account, that they might escape

"Russett puts it to the credit of his honesty," she said. "Honesty is everything with us at present. The man has

made his honesty an excellent speculation. He puts a piece on zero and the bank hands him a sackful. We

may think we have won him to serve us, up comes his honesty. That's how we have Lady Arpington mixed in

"My dear! my whole mind is upon that unhappy girl. It would break Chillon's heart."

Livia pished. "There are letters we read before we crack the seal. She is out of that ditch, and it suits Russett

that she should be. He's not often so patient. A woman foot to foot against his willI see him throwing high

stakes. Tyrants are brutal; and really she provokes him enough. You needn't be alarmed about the treatment

Neither Livia nor Gower wondered at the clearing of the mystery, before it went to swell the scandal. A

young nobleman of ready power, quick temper, few scruples, and a taxed forbearance, was not likely to stand

thwarted and goadedand by a woman. Lord Fleetwood acted his part, inscrutable as the blank of a locked

GOWER'S bedroom window looked over the shrubs of the square, and as his form of revolt from a city life

was to be up and out with the sparrows in the early flutter of morning, for a stretch of the legs where grass

was green and trees were not enclosed, he rarely saw a figure below when he stood dressing. Now there

appeared a petticoated one stationary against the rails, with her face lifted. She fronted the house, and while

he speculated abstractedly, recognition rushed on him. He was down and across the roadway at leaps.

He judged of the wellfavoured girl that she could steer her way through cities: mouth and brows were a

warning to challenger pirate craft of a vessel carrying guns; and the red lips kept their firm line when they

"It's a distance. She's quite safe, no harm; she's a prisoner; she's well fed; she's not illtreated."

"That's as it happens. I'm lucky in seeing you early. He don't mean to hurt her; he won't be beaten. All she

asks is ten minutes with him. If he would!he won't. She didn't mean to do him offence t'other night in that

placeyou've heard. Kit Ines told me he was on duty theregoing. She couldn't help speaking when she

had eyes on her husband. She kisses the ground of his footsoles, you may say, let him be ever so unkind. She

and I were crossing to the corner of Roper Street a rainy night, on way to Mile End, away down, to one of

your father's families, Mother Davis and her sick daughter and the little ones, and close under the

publichouse Goat and Beard we were seized on and hustled into a covered carriage that was there, and they

drove sharp. She's not one to scream. We weren't frightened. We both made the same guess. They drove us to

"He's fixed she's to leave London, Mr. Woodseer. I've seen Kit Ines. And she's to have one of the big houses

to her use. I guessed Kit Ines was his broom. He defends it because he has his money to makeand be a

dirty broom for a fortune! But any woman's sure of decent handling with Kit Inesnot to speak of lady. He

"Not he. His pride's his obedience to his `paytron'he calls his master, and won't hear that name abused. We

are on the first floor; all the lower doors are locked day and night. New street, not much neighbours; she

"If I'd broke a leg, Mr. Kit Ines would have had to go to his drams. It wasn't very high; and a flowerbed

underneath. My mistress wanted to be the one. She has to be careful. She taught me how to jump down not to

hurt. She makes you feel you can do anything. I had a bother to get her to let me and be quiet herself. She's

not one to put it upon others, you'll learn. When I was down I felt like a stick in the ground and sat till I had

my feet, she at the window waiting; and I started for you. She kissed her hand. I was to come to you, and then

"That's not new, Mr. Woodseer. I do trust you, and you his friend. But you are the minister's son, and any

man not a great nobleman must have some heart for her. You'll learn. He kills her so because she's fond of

himloves him, however he strikes. No, not like a dog, as men say of us. She'd die for him this night, need

were. Live with her, you won't find many men match her for brave; and she's good. My Sally calls her a Bible

saint. I could tell you stories of her goodness, short the time though she's been down our way. And better

there for her than at that inn he left her at to pine and watch the Royal Sovereign come swing come smirk in

sailor blue and star to meet the rainwould make anybody disrespect Royalty or else go mad! He's a great

nobleman, he can't buy what she's ready to give; and if he thinks he breaks her will now, it's because she

thinks she's obeying a higher than him, or no lord alive and Kit Ines to back him 'd hold her. Women want a

priest to speak to men certain times. I wish I dared; we have to bite our tongues. He's master now, but, as I

believe God's above, if he plays her false, he's the one to be brought to shame. I talk."

"Talk on, Madge," said Gower, to whom the girl's short syllabled run of the lips was a mountain rill

"You won't let him hurry her off where she'll eat her heart for never seeing him again? She prays to be near

"I get it by bits. I'm with her so, it's as good as if I was inside her. She can't obey when it goes the wrong way

"Love and wisdom won't pull together, and they part company for good at the church door," said Gower.

Madge hummed a moan of assent. "And my poor Sally 'll have to marry. I can't leave my mistress while she

wants me, and Sally can't be alone. It seems we take a step and harm's done, though it's the right step we

He passed the remark. What it was that girls' minds occasionally or habitually did, or whether they had minds

to turn, or whether they took their whims for minds, were untroubled questions with a young man studying

abstract and adoring surface nature too exclusively to be aware of the manifestation of her spirit in the flesh,

as it is not revealed so much by men. However, she had a voice and a face that led him to be thoughtful over

her devotedness to her mistress, after nearly losing her character for the prizefighter, and he had to thank her

for invigorating him. His disposition was to muse and fall slack, helpless to a friend. Here walked a creature

exactly the contrary. He listened to the steps of the dissimilar pair on the detonating pavement, and eyed a

"You don't tire, sir," said she. "Sally and I see you stalking out for the open country in the still of the

morning. She thinks you look pale for want of food, and ought to have some one put a biscuit into your

He was about to be astonished, and reflected that she had grounds for her sagacity. His next thought plunged

him into contempt for Kit Ines, on account of the fellow's lapses to sottishness. But there would be no

contempt of Kit Ines in a tussle with him. Nor could one funk the tussle and play cur, if Kit's engaged young

Contemplative over these matters, the philosopher transformed to man of action heard Madge say she read

directions in London by churches, and presently exclaiming disdainfully, and yet relieved, "Spooner Villas,"

she turned down a row of small detached houses facing a brickfield, that had just contributed to the erection

Madge pointed to the marks of her jump, deep in flowerbed earth under an open window.

She smote at the door. Carinthia nodded from her window. Close upon that, Kit Ines came bounding to the

parlour window; he spied and stared. Gower was known to him as the earl's paymaster; so he went to the

Kit swallowed his mouthful of surprise in a second look at Madge and the ploughed gardenbed beneath the

"To me?for me to deliver to you?for you to do my lord's bidding? Where's your head?"

She and her mistress, and Kit's mate, and the old woman receiving the word for a cup of tea, were soon in the

passage. Kit's mate had a ready obedience for his pay, nothing else,no counsel at all, not a suggestion to a

head knocked to a pudding by Madge's jump and my lord's paymaster here upon the scene.

"I'm to take my lady to my lord?" and, "Does it mean my lady wants a fly?" Kit asked, and harked back on

The business looked inclined to be leaky, but which the way for proving himself other than a donkey puzzled

Kit: so much so, that a shove made him partly grateful. Madge's clever countermove had stunned his

judgement. He was besides acting subordinate to his patron's paymaster; and by the luck of it, no voice of

woman interposed. The countess and her maid stood by like a disinterested couple. Why be suspicious, if he

was to keep the countess in sight? She was a nice lady, and he preferred her good opinion. She was brave,

and he did her homage. It might be, my lord had got himself round to the idea of thanking her for saving his

nob that night, and his way was to send and have her up, to tell her he forgave her, after the style of lords.

Gower pricked into him by saying aside: "Mad, I suppose, in case of a noise?" And he could not answer quite

manfully, lost his eyes and coloured. Neighbours might have required an explanation of shrieks, he

They were afoot, walking at Carinthia's pace before halfpast seven. She would not hear of any conveyance.

She was cheerful, and, as it was pitiful to see, enjoyed her walk. Hearing of her brother's departure for the

Austrian capital, she sparkled. Her snatches of speech were short flights out of the meditation possessing her.

Gower noticed her easier English, that came home to the perpetual student he was. She made use of some of

his father's words, and had assimilated them mentally besides appropriating them: the verbalizing of

"purpose," then peculiar to his father, for example. She said, in reply to a hint from him: "If my lord will

allow me an interview, I purpose to be obedient." No one could imagine of her that she spoke broken

spiritedly. Her obedience was to a higher than a mortal lord. and Gower was touched to the quick through the

Contrasting her with Countess Livia and her cousin, the earl might think her inferior on the one small, square

compartment called by them the world; but she carried the promise of growth, a character in expansion, and

she had at least natural grace, a deerlike step. Although her picturesqueness did not swarm on him with

images illuminating night, subduing day, like the Countess Livia's, it was marked, it could tower and

intermittently eclipse; and it was of the uplifting and healing kind by comparison, not a delicious balefulness.

The bigger houses, larger shops, austere streets of private residences, were observed by the recent inhabitant

"We shall soon be there now," he encouraged her, doubtful though the issue appeared.

"It is a summer morning for the Ortler, the GrossGlockner, the Venediger,all our Alps, Mr. Woodseer."

"For I have them when I want them to sight. It is the feet are so desirous. I feel them so this morning, after

"I know the feeling," said Gower; "any movement of us not our own impulse, hurries the body and deadens

the mind. And by the way, my dear lady, I spoke of the earl's commands to this man behind us walking with

your Madge. My father would accuse me of Jesuitry. Ines mentioned commands, and I took advantage of it."

Gower had a thought of the smaller creature, greater by position, to whom she was going for her chance. He

alluded to his experience of the earl's kindness in relation to himself, from a belief in his "honesty"; dotted

outlines of her husband's complex character, or unmixed and violently opposing elements.

The name of the street of beautiful shops woke a happy smile on her mouth. "Father talked of it; my mother,

too. He has it written down in his Book of Maxims. When I was a girl, I dreamed of one day walking up

They stepped from the pavement and crossed the roadway for a sidestreet leading to the square. With the

"We are near. My lord will not be troubled by me. He has only to meet me. There has been misunderstanding.

I have vexed him; I could not help it. I will go where he pleases after I have heard him give orders. He thinks

Gower muttered her word "misunderstanding." They were at the earl's house door. One tap at it, and the two

applicants for admission would probably be shot as far away from Lord Fleetwood as when they were on the

Styrian heights last autumn. He delivered the tap, amused by the idea. It was like a summons to a genie of

Only the footman appeared at that early hour, and his countenance was blank whitewash as he stood rigid

against the wall for the lady to pass. Madge followed into the morning room; Ines remained in the hall, where

he could have the opening speech with his patron, and where he soon had communication with the butler.

This official entered presently to Gower, presenting a loaded forehead. A note addressed to Mrs.

KirbyLevellier at the Countess Livia's house hard by was handed to him for instant despatch. He dignified a

"You can speak in the presence of the Countess of Fleetwood, Mr. Waytes," Gower said.

Waytes checked a bend of his shoulders. He had not a word, and he turned to send the note. He was

compelled to think that he saw a wellgrown young woman in the Whitechapel Countess.

Gower's note reached Henrietta on her descent to the breakfasttable. She was alone, and thrown into a

torture of perplexity: for she wanted advice as to the advice to be given to Janey, and Livia was an utterly

unprofitable person to consult in the case. She thought of Lady Arpington, not many doors distant. Drinking

one hasty cup of tea, she sent for her bonnet, and hastened away to the great lady, whom she found rising

Lady Arpington read Gower's note. She unburdened herself: "Oh! So it's no longer a bachelor's household!"

Henrietta heaved the biggest of sighs. "I fear the poor dear may have made matters worse."

To which Lady Arpington said: "Worse or better, my child!" and shrugged; for the present situation strained

She proposed to go forthwith, and give what support she could to the Countess of Fleetwood.

They descended the steps of the house to the garden and the Green Park's gravel walk up to Piccadilly. There

they had view of Lord Fleetwood on horseback leisurely turning out of the main way's tide. They saw him

alight at the mews. As they entered the square, he was met some doors from the south corner by his good or

evil genius, whose influence with him came next after the marriage in the amazement it caused, and was

perhaps to be explained by it; for the wealthiest of young noblemen bestowing his name on an unknown girl,

would be the one to make an absurd adventurer his intimate. Lord Fleetwood bent a listening head while Mr.

How do we understand laughter at such a communication as he must be hearing from the man? Signs of a

sharp laugh indicated either his cruel levity or that his presumptuous favourite trifledand the man's talk

could be droll, Lady Arpington knew: it had, she recollected angrily, diverted her, and softened her to tolerate

the intruder into regions from which her class and her period excluded the lowly born, except at the dinner

tables of stale politics and tattered scandal. Nevertheless, Lord Fleetwood mounted to his house door, still

listening. His "Asmodeus," on the tongue of the world, might be doing the part of Mentor really. The house

Fleetwood said something to Gower; he swung round, beheld the ladies and advanced to them, saluting. "My

dear Lady Arpington! quite so, you arrive opportunely. When the enemy occupies the citadel, it's proper to

surrender. Say, I beg, she can have the house, if she prefers it. I will fall back on Esslemont. Arrangements

His bow included Henrietta loosely. Lady Arpington had exclaimed: "Enemy, Fleetwood?" and Gower, in his

ignorance of the smoothness of aristocratic manners, expected a remonstrance; but Fleetwood was allowed to

go on, with his air of steely geniality and a decision, that his friend imagined he could have broken down like

"Lord Fleetwood may regret his change of mind," said she. "The Countess of Fleetwood will have my advice

She and Henrietta sat alone with Carinthia for an hour. Coming forth, Lady Arpington ejaculated to herself:

"Villainy somewhere!You will do well, Henrietta, to take up your quarters with her a day or two. She can

A shudder of the repulsion from men crept over the younger lady. But she was a warrior's daughter, and

"No need for hostilities to lighten our darkness," Lady Arpington rejoined. "You know her? trust her?"

"One cannot doubt her face. She is my husband's sister. Yes, I do trust her. I nail my flag to her cause."

The flag was crimson, as it appeared on her cheeks; and that intimated a further tale, though not of so

These young women, with the new complications obtruded by them, irritated a benevolent great governing

lady, who had married off her daughters and embraced her grandchildren, comfortably finishing that chapter;

and beheld now the apparition of the sex's ancient tripping foe, when circumstances in themselves were quite

enough to contend against on their behalf. It seemed to say, that nature's most burdened weaker must always

be beaten. Despite Henrietta's advocacy and Carinthia's clear face, it raised a spectral form of a suspicion, the

more effective by reason of the much required justification it fetched from the shades to plead apologies for

Lord Fleetwood's erratic, if not mad, and in any case ugly, conduct. What otherwise could be his excuse?

Such was his need of one, that the wife he crushed had to be proposed for sacrifice, in the mind of a lady

Lady Arpington had counselled Carinthia to stay where she was, the Fates having brought her there. Henrietta

was too generous to hesitate in her choice between her husband's sister and the earl. She removed from

Livia's house to Lord Fleetwood's. My lord was at Esslemont two days; then established his quarters at

Scrope's hotel, five minutes' walk from the wedded lady to whom the right to bear his title was granted, an

interview with him refused. Such a squaring for the battle of spouses had neveror not in mighty

DAME Gossip at this present pass bursts to give us a review of the social world siding for the earl or for his

countess; and her parrot cry of "John Rose Mackrell!" with her head's loose shake over the smack of her lap,

to convey the contemporaneous tipsy relish of the rich good things he said on the subject of the contest,

To save the story from having its vein tied, we may accept the reminder, that he was the countess's voluble

advocate at a period when her friends were shy to speak of her. After relating the Vauxhall Gardens episode

in burlesque Homeric during the freshness of the scandal, Rose Mackrell's enthusiasm for the heroine of his

humour set in. He tracked her to her parentage, which was new breath blown into the sunken tradition of

some Old Buccaneer and his Countess Fanny: and, a turn of great good luck helping him to a copy of the

book of the MAXIMS FOR MEN, he would quote certain of the racier ones, passages of Captain John Peter

Kirby's personal adventures in various lands and waters illustrating the text, to prove that the old warrior

acted by the rule of his recommendations. They had the repulsive attraction proper to rusty lumber swords

and truncheons that have tasted brains. They wove no mild sort of halo for the head of a

People were willing to believe in her jump of thirty feet or more off a suburban housetop to escape durance,

and her midnight storming of her lord's town house, and ousting of him to go find his quarters at Scrope's

hotel. He, too, had his band of pugilists, as it was known; and he might have heightened a raging scandal. The

nobleman forbore. A woman's blow gracefully taken adds a score of inches to our stature, floor us as it may:

we win the world's afterthoughts. Rose Mackrell sketched the earl;always alert, smart, quick to meet a

combination and protect a dignity never obtruded, and in spite of himself the laugh of the town. His humour

flickered wildly round the ridiculous position of a prominent young nobleman, whose bearing and character

Nevertheless, the earl's figure continuing to be classic sculpture, it allied him with the aristocracy of martyrs,

that burn and do not wince. He propitiated none, and as he could not but suffer shrewdly, he gained esteem

enough to shine through the woman's pitiless drenching of him. During his term at Scrope's hotel, the

carousals there were quite oldcentury and matter of discourse. He had proved his return to sound sense in

the dismissal of "the fiddler," notoriously the woman's lieutenant, or more; and nightly the revelry closed at

the great gamingtables of St. James's Street, while Whitechapel held the coroneted square, well on her way

to the Law courts, as Abrane and Potts reported; and positively so, "clear case." That was the coming

A rich man's easy smile over losses at play, merely taught his emulous troop to feel themselves poor devils in

the pocket. But Fleetwood's contempt of Sleep was a marvel, superhuman, and accused them of an inferior

vigour, hard for young men to admit by the example. He never went to bed. Issuing from Fortune's

halldoors in the bright, lively, summer morning, he mounted horse and was away to the hills. Or he took the

arm of a Roman Catholic nobleman, Lord Feltre, and walked with him from the green tables and the

establishment's renowned dry still Sillery to mass at a Papist chapel. As it was not known that he had given

his word to abjure his religion, the pious gamblers did no worse than spread an alarm and quiet it, by the

"I am with Livia tomorrow. Janey starts for Wales to morrow morning, a voluntary exile. She pleaded to

go back to that place where you had to leave her, promising she would not come Westward; but was

persuaded. Lady Arpington approves. The situation was getting too terribly strained. We met and passed my

"He was walking his horseelegant cavalier that he is: would not look on his wife. A woman pulled by her

collar should be passive; if she pulls her way, she is treated as a dog. I see nothing else in the intention of

poor Janey's last offence to him. There is an opposite counsel, and he can be eloquent, and he will be heard

on her side. How could she manage the most wayward when she has not an idea of ordinary men? But, my

husband, they have our tie between them; it may move him. It subdues herand nothing else would have

done that. If she had been in England a year before the marriage, she would I think, have understood better

how to guide her steps and her tongue for his good pleasure. She learns daily, very quickly: observes,

assimilates; she reads and has her commentswould have shot far ahead of your Riette, with my advantages.

"Your unclebut he will bear any charge on his conscience as long as he can get the burden off his

shoulders. Do not fret, my own! Reperuse the aboveyou will see we have grounds for hope.

"He should have looked down on her! No tears from her eyes, but her eyes were tears. She does not rank

among beautiful women. She has her moments for outshining themthe loveliest of spectres! She caught at

my heart. I cannot forget her face looking up for him to look down. A great painter would have reproduced it,

a great poet have rendered the impression. Nothing short of the greatest. That is odd to say of one so simple

as she. But when accidents call up her reserves, you see mountain heights where mists wereshe is actually

glorified. Her friendI do believe a friendthe Mr. Woodseer you are to remember meeting

somewherea sprained anklehas a dozen similes ready for what she is when pain or happiness vivify her.

Or, it may be, tender charity. She says, that if she feels for suffering people, it is because she is the child of

"Mr. Woodseer came every other evening. Our only enlivenment. Livia followed her policy, in refusing to

call. We lived luxuriously; no money, not enough for a box at the opera, though we yearnedyou can

imagine. Chapters of philosophy read out and expounded instead. Janey likes them. He sets lessons to her

queer maidreading, writing, pronunciation of English. An inferior language to Welsh, for poetical

purposes, we are informed. So Janey determining to apply herself to Welsh, and a chameleon Riette dreading

that she will be taking a contrary view of the honest soulsas she feels them to be when again under

"The message from Janey to Scrope's hotel was despatched halfanhour after we had driven in from the

park; fruit of a brown meditation. I wrote itthird persona single sentence. Arrangements are made for

her to travel comfortably. It is funnythe shops for her purchases of clothes, necessaries, etc., are specified;

she may order to any extent. Not a shilling of money for her poor purse. What can be the secret of that? He

does nothing without an object. To me, uniformly civil, no irony, few compliments. Livia writes, that I am

commended for keeping Janey company. What can be the secret of a man scrupulously just with one hand,

and at the same time cruel with the other? Mr. Woodseer says, his wealth:`More money than is required

"I have written my husbandas Janey ceases to call her own; and it was pretty and touching to hear her `my

husband.'Oh! a dull letter. But he is my husband though he keeps absentto be longed forhe is my

husband still, my husband always. Chillon is Henrietta's husband, the world cries out, and when she is

flattered she does the like, for then it is not too presumptuous that she should name Henrietta Chillon's wife.

In my ears, husband has the sweeter sound. It brings an angel from overhead. Will it bring him onehalf hour

sooner? My love! My dear! If it did, I should be lisping `husband, husband, husband' from cockcrow to

owl's cry. Livia thinks the world foolish, if not detestable. She and I have our different opinions. She is for

luxury. I choose poverty and my husband. Poverty has its beauty, if my husband is the sun of it. Elle radote.

She would not have written so dull a letter to her husband if she had been at the opera last night, or listened to

a distant streetband. No morethe next line would be bleeding. He should have her blood too, if that were

her husband'sit would never be; but if it were for his good in the smallest way. Chillon's wish is to give his

blood for them he loves. Never did woman try more to write worthily to her absent lord and fall so miserably

into the state of dripping babe from bath on nurse's knee. Cover me, my lord and love, my cause forno, my

excuse, my refuge from myself. We are one? Oh! we are one!and we have been separated eight and twenty

That was a letter for the husband and lover to receive in a foreign land and be warmed.

The tidings of Carinthia washed him clean of the grimy district where his waxen sister had developed her

stubborn insensibility;resembling craziness, every perversion of the refinement demanded by young

Englishmen of their ladies; and it pacified him with the belief that she was now at rest, the disturbed history

of their father and mother at rest as well; his conscience in relation to the marriage likewise at rest. Chillon

had a wife. Her writing of the welcome to poverty stirred his knowledge of his wife's nature. Carinthia might

bear it and harden to flint; Henrietta was a butterfly for the golden rays. His thoughts, all his energies, were

bent on the making of money to supply her need for the pleasure she flew ina butterfly's grub without it.

Her letter's embracing close was costly to them. It hurried him to the compromise of a debatable business,

and he fell into the Austrian Government's terms for the payment of the inheritance from his father;

calculating thathis sister's share deductedmoney would be in hand to pay pressing debts and enable

Henrietta to live unworried by cares until he should have squeezed debts, long due and increasing, out of the

miserly old lord, his uncle. A prospect of supplies for twelve months, counting the hack and carriage

Henrietta had always been used to, seemed about as far as it was required to look by the husband hastening

homeward to his wife's call. Her letter was a call in the night. Besides, there were his yet untried Inventions.

The new gunpowder testing at Croridge promised to provide Henrietta with many of the luxuries she could

have had, and had abandoned for his sake. The new blasting powder and a destructive shell might build her

the palace she deserved. His uncle was, no doubt, his partner. If, however, the profits were divided, sufficient

wealth was assured. But his uncle remained a dubious image. The husband and lover could enfold no positive

One minute let mention be of the excitement over Protestant England when that rumour disseminated,

telling of her wealthiest nobleman's visit to a monastery, up in the peaks and snows; and of his dwelling

among the monks, and assisting in all their services day and night, hymning and chanting, uttering not one

word for one whole week: his Papistical friend, Lord Feltre, with him, of course, after Jesuit arts had allured

him to that place of torrents and lightnings and canticles and demon echoes, all as though expressly contrived

for the horrifying of sinners into penitence and confession and the monkish cowl up to life's end, not to speak

of the abjuration of worldly possessions and donation of them into the keeping of the shaven brothers; when

either they would have settled a band of them here in our very midst, or they would have impoverishedis

not too strong a wordthe country by taking the money's worth of the mines, estates, mansions, freehold

streets and squares of our metropolis out of it without scruple; rejoicing so to bleed the Protestant faith.

Underrate it nowthen it was a truly justifiable anxiety: insomuch that you heard people of station, eminent

titled persons, asking, like the commonest low Radicals, whether it was prudent legislation to permit of the

inheritance of such vast wealth by a young man, little more than a boy, and noted for freaks. And some

declared it could not be allowed for foreign monks to have a claim to inherit English property. There was a

general consent, that if the Earl of Fleetwood went to the extreme of making over his property to those

monks, he should be pronounced insane and incapable. Ultimately the world was a little pacified by hearing

So it might be; but what if he had no child! The marriage amazing everybody scarcely promised fruit, it was

thought. Countess Livia, much besought for her opinion, scouted the possibility. And Carinthia Jane was

proclaimed by John Rose Mackrell (to his dying day the poor gentleman tried vainly to get the second

syllable of his name accentuated) a young woman who would outlive twice over the husband she had. He said

of his name, it was destined to pass him down a dead fish in the nose of posterity, and would affect his best

jokes; which something has done, or the present generation has lost the sense of genuine humour.

Thanks to him, the talk of the Whitechapel Countess again sprang up, merrily as ever; and after her having

become, as he said, "a desiccated celebrity," she outdid cabinet ministers and naughty wives for a living

morsel in the world's mouth. She was denounced by the patriotic party as the cause of the earl's dalliance with

The earl, you are to know, was then coasting along the Mediterranean, on board his beautiful schooner yacht,

with his Lord Feltre, bound to make an inspection of Syrian monasteries, and forget, if he could, the face of

Those two lords, shut up together in a yacht, were advised by their situation to be bosom friends, and they

quarrelled violently, and were reconciled, and they quarrelled again; they were explosive chemicals; until the

touch of dry land relieved them of what they really fancied the spell of the Fiend. For their argumentative

topic during confinement was Woman, when it was not Theology; and even off a yacht, those are subjects to

kindle the utmost hatred of dissension, if men are not perfectly concordant. They agreed upon land to banish

any talk of Women or Theology, where it would have been comparatively innocent; so they both desiring to

be doing the thing they had sworn they would not do, the thoughts of both were fastened on one or the other

interdicted subject. They hardly spoke; they perceived in their longing minds, that the imagined spell of the

Fiend was indeed the bile of the sea, secreted thickly for want of exercise, and they both regretted the days

and nights of their angry controversies; unfit pilgrims of the Holy Land, they owned.

To such effect, Lord Fleetwood wrote to Gower Woodseer, as though there had been no breach between

them, from Jerusalem, expressing the wish to hear his cool woodnotes of the philosophy of Life, fresh

drawn from Nature's breast; and urgent for an answer, to be addressed to his hotel at Southampton, that he

He wrote in the month of January. His arrival at Southampton was on the thirteenth day of March; and there

he opened a letter some weeks old, the bearer of news which ought by rights to make husbands proudly

FLEETWOOD had dropped his friend Lord Feltre at Ancona; his good fortune was to be alone when the

clang of bells rang through his head in the reading of Gower's lines. Other letters were opened: from the

Countess Livia, from Lady Arpington, from Captain KirbyLevellier. There was one from his lawyers,

informing him of their receipt of a communication dated South Wales, December 11th, and signed Owain

Wythan; to the effect, that the birth of a son to the Earl of Fleetwood was registered on the day of the date,

Livia scornfully stated the tattling world's "latest." The captain was as brief, in ordinary words, whose quick

run to the stop could be taken for a challenge of the eye. It stamped the adversary's frown on Fleetwood

reading. Lady Arpington was more politic; she wrote of "a healthy boy," and "the healthy mother giving him

breast," this being "the way for the rearing of strong men." She condescended to the particulars, that she

The earl had not been so reared: his mother was not the healthy mother. One of his multitudinous, shifty, but

ineradicable ambitions was to exhibit an excellingly vigorous, tireless constitution. He remembered the

needed refreshment of the seabreezes aboard his yacht during the week following the sleepdiscarded nights

at Scrope's and the green tables. For a week he hung to the smell of brine, in rapturous amity with Feltre, until

A powerful leaven was put into him by the tidings out of Wales. Gower, good fellow, had gone down to see

the young mother three weeks after the birth of her child. She was already renewing her bloom. She had

produced the boy in the world's early manner, lightly, without any of the tragic modern hovering over death

to give the life. Gower compared it to a "flush of the vernal orchard after a day's drink of sunlight." That was

The good fellow was perhaps absurdly poetical. Still we must have poetry to hallow this and other forms of

energy: or say, if you like, the right view of them impels to poetry. Otherwise we are in the breeding yards,

among the litters and the farrows. It is a question of looking down or looking up. If we are poor creaturesas

we are if we do but feast and gamble and beget we shall run for a time with the dogs and come to the finish

of swine. Better say, life is holy! Why, then have we to thank her who teaches it.

He gazed at the string of visions of the woman naming him husband, making him a father: the imagined

Carinthiabeautiful Gorgon, haggard Venus; the Carinthia of the precipice tree shoot; Carinthia of the

ducal dancinghall; and she at the altarrails; she on the coach box; she alternately softest of brides,

doughtiest of Amazons. A mate for the caress, an electrical heroine, fronted him.

Yes, and she was Lord Fleetwood's wife, cracking sconces,a demoiselle Moll Flanders,the world's

Whitechapel Countess out for an airing, infernally earnest about it, madly ludicrous; the schemer to catch his

word, the petticoated Shylock to bind him to the letter of it; now persecuting, haunting him, now immovable

for obstinacy; malignant to stay down in those vile slums and direct tons of sooty waters on his head from its

mains in the sight of London, causing the least histrionic of men to behave as an actor. He beheld her a skull

But this woman was the woman who made him a father; she was the mother of the heir of the House; and the

boy she clasped and suckled as her boy was his boy. They met inseparably in that new life.

Truly, there could not be a woman of flesh so near to a likeness with the beatific image of Feltre's worshipped

The thought sparkled and darkened in Fleetwood's mind, as a star passing into cloud. For an uproarious world

claimed the woman, jeered at all allied with her; at her husband most, of course:the punctilious noodle! the

golden jackass, tethered and goaded! He had choice among the pick of women: the daughter of the Old

Buccaneer was preferred by the wiseacre C*lebs. She tricked him cunningly and struck a tremendous return

By the way, was she actually born in wedlock? Lord Levellier's assurances regarding her origin were, by the

calculation, a miser's shuffles to clinch his bargain. Assuming the representative of holy motherhood to be a

woman of illegitimate birth, the history of the House to which the spotted woman gave an heir would suffer a

jolt when touching on her. And altogether the history fumed rank vapours. Imagine her boy in his father's

name a young collegian! No commonly sensitive lad could bear the gibes of the fellows raking at

antecedents: Fleetwood would be the name to start roars. Smarting for his name, the earl chafed at the boy's

The world sat on him. His confession to some degree of weakness, even to folly, stung his pride of

individuality so that he had to soothe the pain by tearing himself from a thought of his folly's partner, shutting

himself up and away from her. Then there was a cessation of annoyance, flatteringly agreeable: which can

come to us only of our having done the right thing, young men will think. He felt at once warmly with the

world, enjoyed the world's kind shelter, and in return for its eulogy of his unprecedented attachment to the

pledge of his word, admitted an understanding of its laughter at the burlesque edition of a noble lady in the

The pictures and images in it were not the principal matter, the impression had been deep. A plain

transcription of the young mother's acts and words did more to portray her: the reader could supply

"Never thatyou have my word!" Fleetwood said; and he nodded consentingly over her next remark: "Not

The stubborn wife would be the last of women to sit and weep at a rifled mother.

A child of the Countess Carinthia (he phrased it) would not be deficient in will, nor would the youngster lack

For his part, comparison rushing at him and searching him, he owned that he leaned on pride. To think that he

did, became a theme for pride. The mother had the primitive virtues, the father the developed: he was the

richer mine. And besides, he was he, the unriddled, complex, individual he; she was the plain barbarian

Henrietta was analyzed in a glimpse. Courage, animal healthfulness, she, too, mighther husband not

obstructing transmit; and good looks, eyes of the sapphire AEgean. And therewith such pliability as the

Fleetwood's wrath with her for refusing him and inducing him in spite to pledge his word elsewhere,

haphazard, pricked a curiosity to know whether the woman could beand easily! easily! he wageredled to

make her conduct warrant for his contempt of her. Led,that is, misled, you might say, if you were pleading

for a doll. But it was necessary to bait the pleasures for the woman, in order to have full view of the precious

fine fate one has escaped. Also to get well rid of a sort of hectic in the blood, which the woman's beauty has

cast on that reflecting tide: a feversign, where the fever has become quite emotionless and is merely

desirous for the stain of it to be washed out. As this is not the desire to possess or even to taste, contempt will

do it. When we know that the weaver of the fascinations is purchasable, we toss her to the market where men

buy; and we walk released from vile subjection to one of the female heap:subjection no longer, doubtless,

and yet a stain of the past flush, often colouring our reveries, creating active phantasms of a passion

The plotformless plotto get release by the sacrifice or at least a crucial temptation of the woman, that

should wash his blood clean of her image, had a shade of the devilish, he acknowledged; and the apology

offered no improvement of its aspect. She might come out of the trial triumphant. And benefit for himself,

even a small privilege, even the pressure of her hand, he not only shrank from the thought of winning, he

loathed the thought. He was too delicate over the idea of the married woman whom he fancied he loved in her

maidenhood. Others might press her hand, lead her the dance: he simply wanted his release. She had set him

on fire; he conceived a method for trampling the remaining sparks and erasing stain and scars; that was all.

Henrietta rejected her wealthy suitor: she might some day hence be seen crawling abjectly to wealth, glad of a

drink from the cup it holds, intoxicated with the draught. An injured pride could animate his wealth to crave

Devilish, if you like. He had expiated the wickedness in Cistercian seclusion. His wife now drove him to sin

She had given him a son. That fluted of home and honourable life. She had her charm, known to him alone.

But how, supposing she did not rub him to bristle with fresh irritations, how go to his wife while Henrietta

held her throne? Consideration was due to her until she stumbled. Enough if she wavered. Almost enough if

she stood firm as a statue in the winds, and proved that the first page of her was a false introduction. The

surprising apparition of a beautiful woman with character; a lightlythrilled, pleasureloving woman devoted

to her husband or protected by her rightful self esteem, would loosen him creditably. It had to be witnessed,

for faith in it. He reverenced our legendary good women, and he bowed to noble deeds; and he ascribed the

former to poetical creativeness, the latter operated as a scourging of his flesh to yield its demoniacal inmates.

Or stay: a studious reperusal of Gower Woodseer's letter enriched a little incident. Fleetwood gave his wife

Mrs. Wythan down in Wales related it to Gower. Carinthia and Madge, trudging over the treeless hills, came

on a birchen clump round a deep hollow or gullypit; precipitous, the earl knew, he had peeped over the edge

in his infant days. There at the bottom, in a foot or so of water, they espied a lamb, and they rescued the poor

beastie by going down to it, one or both. It must have been the mountainfooted one. A man would hesitate,

spying below. Fleetwood wondered how she had managed to climb up, and carrying the lamb! Down pitches

Madge Winch to helpthey did it between them. We who stand aloof admire stupidly. To defend himself

from admiring, he condemned the two women for the risk they ran to save a probably broken legged little

beast: and he escaped the melting mood by forcing a sneer at the sort of stuff out of which popular ballads are

woven. Carinthia was accused of letting her adventurous impulses and sentimental female compassion

swamp thought of a mother's duties. If both those women had broken their legs the child might have cried

Gower wrote in a language transparent of the act, addressed to a reader whose memory was to be

impregnated. His reader would have flown away from the simple occurrence on arabesques and modulated

tones; and then envisaging them critically, would have tossed his poor little story to the winds, as a small

thing magnified: with an object, being the next thought about it. He knew his Fleetwood so far.

His letter concluded: "I am in a small Surrey village over a baker's shop, rent eight shillings per week, a

dame's infant school opposite my window, miles of firwood, heath, and bracken openings, for the winged or

the nested fancies. Love Nature, she makes you a lord of her boundless, off any ten square feet of common

earth. I go through my illusions and come always back on that good truth. It says, beware of the world's

passion for flavours and spices. Much tasted, they turn and bite the biter. My exemplars are the lately

breeched youngsters with two pence in their pockets for the gingerbreadnut booth on a fair day. I learn more

from one of them than you can from the whole cavalcade of your attendant Ixionides."

Mounting the box of his coach for the drive to London, Fleetwood had the new name for the parasitic and

"My Ixionides!" he repeated, and did not scorn then so much as he rejoiced to be enlightened by the title. He

craved the presence of the magician who dropped illumination with a single word; wholesomer to think of

than the whole body of those Ixionides:not bad fellows, here and there, he reflected, tolerantly, half

laughing at some of their clownish fun. Gower Woodseer and he had not quarrelled? No, they had merely

parted at one of the crossways. The plebeian could teach that son of the genuflexions, Lord Feltre, a lesson in

manners. Woodseer was the better comrade and director of routes. Into the forest, up on the heights; and free,

not locked; and not parroting day and night, but quick for all that the world has learnt and can tell, though

twothirds of it be composed of Ixionides: that way lies wisdom, and his index was cut that way.

Arrived in town, he ran over the headings of his letters, in no degree anxious for a communication from

She might as well have scrawled her announcement of an event pleasing to her, and, by the calculation,

important to him, if not particularly interesting. The mother's wifeish lines would, perhaps, have been tested

in a furnace. He smarted at the blank of any, of even two or three formal words. She sulked? "I am not a

fallen lamb!" he said. Evidently one had to be a shivering beast in trouble, to excite her to move a hand.

Through so slight a fissure as this piece of discontent cracked in him, the crowd of his grievances with the

woman rushed pellmell, deluging young shoots of sweeter feelings. She sulked! If that woman could not get

the command, he was to know her incapable of submission. After besmutting the name she had filched from

him, she let him understand that there was no intention to repent. Possibly she meant war. In which case a

man must fly, or stand assailed by the most intolerable of vulgar farces;to be compared to a pelting of one

LIVIA welcomed him, with commiserating inquiry behind her languid eyelids. "You have all the latest?" it

"Women love teasing round certain facts, apparently; like the Law courts over their pet cases."

Her complexion varied. "Mr. Ambrose Mallard has once or twice . . . But let me beg youthe town is raging

with it. My dear Russett, a bold front now; there's the chance of your release in view."

"So it's Brosey Mallard now. You choose your deputy queerly. He's as bad as Abrane, with steam to it.

"He wins one night; loses every poundnote he has the next; and comes vaunting the `dry still Sillery' of the

"His consolation to you for yours. That is the gentleman. Chummy doesn't change. Say, why not St. Ombre?

"Your relatives have to be thought of, though they are few and not too pleasant."

"If I had thought much of them, what would our relations be? They object to dicing, and I to leadingstrings."

"Both of you appear unlucky in your partners,if winning was the object. She shall have all the distractions

"Russett, this once: I do entreat you to take counsel with your good sense, and remember that you stand

where you are by going against my advice. It is a perfect storm over London. The world has not to be

informed of your generosity; but a chivalry that invites the most horrible of sneers at a man! And what can I

Livia shrugged sadly. "I suppose it serves your purpose to be unintelligible to me."

He rendered himself intelligible immediately by saying, "Before I goa thousand?"

"You are always considerate for the honour of the family, ma'am. Order for the money with you here

"The chorus in classical dramas had generally that sentiment, but the singing was the sweeter for it."

He restrained a bitter reply, touching the kind of persons he had won: a girl from the mountains, a

Livia spelt at the problem he was. She put away the task of reading it. He departed to see Lady Arpington,

As Livia had said, she was a torch. Lady Endor, Lady Eldritch, Lady Cowry, kindled at her. Again there were

flightsthe burning brands over London. The very odd marriage; the no marriage; the

twoendsofthetown marriage; and the maiden marriage a fruitful marriage; the monstrous marriage of the

countess productive in banishment, and the unreadable earl accepting paternity; this Amazing Marriage was

again the riddle in the cracker for tattlers and gapers. It rattled upon the world's native wantonness, the

world's acquired decorum: society's irrepressible original and its powerfully resisting second nature. All the

rogues of the fine sphere ran about with it, male and female; and there was the narrative that suggestively

skipped, and that which trod the minuet measure, dropping a curtsy to ravenous curiosity; the apology

surrendering its defensible cause in supplications to benevolence; and the benevolence damnatory in a too

eloquent urgency; followed by the devout objection to a breath of the subject, so blackening it as to call forth

the profanely circumstantial exposition. Smirks, blushes, dead silences, and in the lower regions roars, hung

But the lady, though absent, did not figure poorly at all. Granting Whitechapel and the shillelagh affair,

certain whispers of her good looks, contested only to be the more violently asserted; and therewith Rose

Mackrell's tale of her being a "young woman of birth," having a "romantic story to tell of herself and her

parentage," made her latest performance the champagne event of it hitherto. Men sparkled when they had it

How, then, London asked, would the Earl of Fleetwood move his pieces in reply to his countess's particularly

His move had no relation to the game, it was thought at first. The world could not suppose that he moved a

simple pawn on his marriage board. He purchased a shop in Piccadilly for the sale of fruit and flowers.

Lady Arpington was entreated to deal at the shop, Countess Livia had her orders; his friends, his parasites and

satellites, were to deal there. Intensely earnest as usual, he besought great ladies to let him have the overflow

of their hothouses; and they classing it as another of the mystifications of a purse crazy for repleteness,

inquired: "But is it you we are to deal with?" And he quite seriously said: "With me, yes, at present."

Something was behind the curtain, of course. His gravity had the effect of the ultracomical in concealing it.

The shop was opened. We have the assurance of Rose Mackrell, that he entered and examined the piles and

pans of fruits, and the bouquets cunningly arranged by a hand smelling French. The shop was roomy,

splendid windows lighted the yellow, the golden, the green and particoloured stores. Four doors off, a

chemist's motley in bellied glasses crashed on the sight. Passengers along the pavement had presented to

them such a contrast as might be shown if we could imagine the Lethean ferryboatload brought sharp

against Pomona's lapful. In addition to the plucked flowers and fruits of the shop, Rose Mackrell more

attentively examined the samples doing service at the counters. They were three, under supervision of a

watchfuleyed fourth. Dame Gossip is for quoting his wit. But the conclusion he reached, after quitting the

shop and pacing his dozen steps, is important; for it sent a wind over the town to set the springs of tattle

going as wildly as when the herald's trumpet blew the announcement for the world to hear out of Wales.

He had observed, that the young woman supervising was deficient in the ease of an established superior; her

brows were troubled: she was, therefore, a lieutenant elevated from a lower grade; and, to his thinking,

conducted the business during the temporary retirement of the mistress of the shop.

London heard, with the variety of feelings which are indistinguishable under a flooding amazement, that the

beautiful new fruit and flower shop had been purchased and stocked by the fabulously wealthy young Earl of

Fleetwood, to give his Whitechapel Countess a taste for business, an occupation, and an honourable means of

There was, Dame Gossip thumps to say, a general belief in this report. Crowds were on the pavement,

peering through the shopwindows. Carriages driving by stopped to look. My lord himself had been visible,

displaying his array of provisions to friends. Nor was credulity damped appreciably when over the shop, in

gold letters, appeared the name of Sarah Winch. It might be the countess's maiden name, if she really was a

But, in truth, the better informed of the town, having begun to think its Cr*sus capable of any eccentricity,

chose to believe. They were at the pitch of excitement which demands and will swallow a succession of

wilder extravagances. To accelerate the delirium of the fun, nothing was too much, because any absurdity

was anticipated. And the earl's readiness to be complimented on the shop's particular merits, his gratified air

at an allusion to it, whirled the fun faster. He seemed entirely unconscious that each step he now took

For such is the fate of a man who has come to be dogged by the humorist for the provision he furnishes; and,

as it happens, he is the more laughable if not in himself a laughable object. The earl's handsome figure, fine

style, and contrasting sobriety heightened the burlesque of his call to admiration of a shop where Whitechapel

would sit in stateaccording to the fiction so closely under the lee of fact that they were not strictly

divisible. Moreover, Sarah Winch, whom Chumley Potts drew into conversation, said, he vowed, she came

up West from Whitechapel. She said it a little nervously, but without blushing. Always on the side of the

The Old Buccaneer has written: Friends may laugh; I am not roused. My enemy's laugh is a bugle blown in

Our enemy's laugh at us rouses to wariness, he would say. He can barely mean, that a condition of

drowsihead is other than providently warned by laughter of friends. An old warrior's tough fibre would,

perhaps, be insensible to that small crackle. In civil life, however, the friend's laugh at us is the loudest of the

danger signals to stop our course: and the very wealthy nobleman, who is known for not a fool, is kept from

hearing it. Unless he does hear it, he can have no suspicion of its being about him: he cannot imagine such

l�semajest� in the subservient courtiers too prudent to betray a sign. So Fleetwood was unwarned; and his

childlike unconsciousness of the boiling sentiments around, seasoned, pricked, and maddened his parasites

under compression to invent, for a faint relief. He had his title for them, they their tales of him.

Dame Gossip would recount the tales. She is of the order of persons inclining to suspect the tittle of truth in

prodigies of scandal. She is rustling and bustling to us of "Carinthia Jane's run up to London to see Sarah

Winch's grand new shop," an eclipse of all existing grand London western shops; and of Rose Mackrell's

account of her dance of proud delight in the shop, ending with a "lovely cheese" just as my lord enters; and

then a scene, wild beyond any conceivable "for pathos and humour" her pet pair of the dissimilar twins,

both banging at us for teardrops by different roads, through a common aperture:and the earl has the

Whitechapel baby boy plumped into his arms; and the countess fetches him a splendid bobdip and rises out

of a second cheese to twirl and fandango it; and, all serious on a sudden, request, whimperingly beseech, his

thanks to her for the crowing successor she has presented him with: my lord ultimately, but carefully,

depositing the infant on a basket of the last oranges of the season, fresh from the Azores, by delivery off my

lord's own schooneryacht in Southampton water; and escaping, leaving his goldheaded stick behind him, a

Quick she tucks up her skirts, she is after him. Dame Gossip speaks amusingly enough of the chase, and

many eyewitnesses to the earl's flight at top speed down the right side of the way along by the Green Park;

and of a Prince of the Blood, a portly Royal Duke on foot, bumped by one or the other of them, she cannot

precisely say which, but "thinks it to have been Carinthia Jane," because the exalted personage, his shock of

surprise abating, turned and watched the chase, in much merriment. And it was called, we are informed, "The

Some tradition of an extenuated nobleman pursued by a lightfooted lady amid great excitement, there is; the

Dame attaches importance also to verses of one of the ballads beginning to gain currency at the time (issuing

ostensibly from London's poetic centre, the Seven Dials, which had, we are to conjecture, got the story by

discolouring filtration through footmen retailing in publichouses the stock of anecdotes they gathered when

stationed behind Rose Mackrell's chair, or Captain Abrane's, or Chumley Potts's), and would have the whole

"Popular sympathy, of course, was all on the side of the Fair, as ever in those days when women had not

The Dame shall expose her confusions. She really would seem to fancy that the ballad verifies the main lines

of the story, which is an impossible one. Carinthia had not the means to travel: she was moneyless. Every bill

of her establishment was paid without stint by Mr. Howell Edwards, the earl's manager of mines; but she had

not even the means for a journey to the Gowerland rocks she longed to see. She had none since she forced her

brother to take the half of her share of their inheritance, �1400, and sent him the remainder.

Accepted by Chillon John as a loan, says Dame Gossip, and no sooner received than consumed by the

pressing necessities of a husband with the Rose Beauty of England to support in the comforts and luxuries he

Still the Dame leans to her opinion that "Carinthia Jane" may have been seen about London: for "where we

have much smoke there must be fire." And the countess never denying an imputation not brought against her

in her hearing, the ballad was unchallenged and London's wags had it their own way. Among the reasons why

they so persistently hunted the earl, his air of a smart correctness shadowed by this new absurdity invited

them, as when a spot of mud on the trimmest of countenances arrests observation. Humour plucked at him the

more for the good faith of his handsome look under the prolific little disfigurement. Besides, a wealthy

despot, with no conception of any hum around him, will have the wags in his track as surely as the flexibles

Fleetwood was honestly unaware of ridicule in the condition of inventive mania at his heels. Scheming, and

hesitating to do, onehalf of his mind was absorbed with the problem of how now to treat the mother of his

boy. Her behaviour in becoming a mother was acknowledged to be good: the production of a boy was

goodconsiderate, he almost thought. He grew so far reconciled to her as to have intimations of a softness

coming on; a wish to hear her speak of the trifling kindness done to the sister of Madge in reward of kindness

done to her; wishes for looks he remembered, secret to him, more his own than any possessions. Dozens of

men had wealth, some had beautiful wives; none could claim as his own that face of the look of sharp steel

melting into the bridal flower, when she sprang from her bed to defend herself and recognized the intruder at

her window, stood smitten:"It is my husband." Moonlight gave the variation of her features.

And that did not appease the resentment tearing him from her, so justifiable then, as he forced himself to

think, now hideous. Glimpses of the pictures his deeds painted of him since his first meeting with this woman

had to be shunned. He threw them off; they were set down to the mystery men are. The degrading, utterly

different, back view of them teaches that Life is an irony. If the teaching is not accepted, and we are to take

the blame, can we bear to live? Therefore, either way the irony of Life is proved. Young men straining at

thought, in the grip of their sensations, reach this logical conclusion. They will not begin by examining the

ground they stand on, and questioning whether they have consciences at peace with the steps to rearward.

Having established Life as the coldly malignant element, which induces to what it chastises, a loathing of

womanhood, the deputed Mother of Life, ensues, by natural sequence. And if there be one among women

who disturbs the serenity we choose to think our due, she wears for us the sinister aspect of a confidential

messenger between Nemesis and the Parc�. Fleetwood was thus compelled to regard Carinthia as both

originally and successively the cause of his internal as well as his exterior discomfort; otherwise those

glimpses would have burnt into perpetual stigmas. He had also to get his mind away from her. They pleaded

His manager at the mines had sent word of ominous discontent down there. His presence might be required.

Obviously, then, the threatened place was unfitting for the Countess of Fleetwood. He despatched a kind of

order through Mr. Howell Edwards, that she should remove to Esslemont to escape annoyances. Esslemont

was the preferable residence. She could there entertain her friends, could spend a pleasanter time there.

Henrietta was preparing to leave London for her dismal, narrow, and, after an absence, desired lovenest.

The earl called to say farewell, cool as a loyal wife could wish him to be, admiring perforce. Marriage and

She had gone to her room to pack and dress. Livia received him. In the midst of the casual commonplaces her

"Oh," said she, and idly drew a letter out of a blottingpad, "we have heard from Wales." She handed it to

"There is no rest for my brother, and I cannot help; I am kept so poor I have not the smallest of sums. I do not

wish to leave Walesthe people begin to love me; and can one be mistaken? I know if I am loved or hated.

But if my lord will give me an allowance of money of some hundreds, I will do his bidding; I will leave

England or I will go to Esslemont; I could sayto Mr. Woodseer, in that part of London. He would not

permit. He thinks me blacked by it, like a sweepboy coming from a chimney; and that I have done injury to

his title. No, Riette, to be a true sister, I must bargain with my lord before I submit. He has not cared to come

and see his little son. His boy has not offended him. There may be some of me in this dear. I know whose

features will soon show to defend the mother's good name. He is early my champion. He is not christened yet,

"Don't be bothered to read the whole," Livia had said, with her hand out, when his eyes were halfway down

She seemed servile enough to some of her friends. "Carinthia" would have had a pleasanter sound. He folded

Henrietta entered and had it restored to her, Livia remarking: "I found it in the blotter after all."

She left them together, having to dress for the drive to the coach office with Henrietta.

"Oh!" cried Henrietta, "balls, routs, dinners, musicas much music as I could desire, even I! What more

"You are seasoned to endure them in all languages. Pity another of your wounded:Brailstone has been hard

"Tomes! But just a little compassion for the devoted. He wouldn't play so madlyif, well, say a tenth

"Yes, on the proviso that ours are respected. But, one instant, Lord Fleetwood, pray. She isI have to speak

He paused, not expecting that the letter would be shown, but silence fired shots, and he had stopped the

petition. "We are to have you for a week's yachting. You prescribe your company. Only be merciful.

Exclusion will mean death to some. Columelli will be touring in Switzerland. You shall have him in the

house when my new bit of ground Northwest of London is open: very handy, ten miles out. We'll have the

If, as Livia said, his passion for her was unchanged, the generosity manifested in the considerate screen it

wore over any physical betrayal of it, deserved the lustre of her eyes. It dwelt a moment, vivid with the heart

close behind and remorseful for misreading of old his fine character. Here was a young man who could be the

very kindest of friends to the woman rejecting him to wed another. Her smile wavered. How shall a loving

wife express warmth of sentiment elsewhere, without the one beam too much, that plunges her on a tideway?

His claim of nothing called for everything short of the proscribed. She gave him her beauty in fullest flower.

It had the appearance of a temptation; and he was not tempted, though he admired; his thought being,

But he admired. That condition awakened his unsatisfied past days to desire positive proof of her

worthlessness. The past days writhed in him. The present were loveless, entirely cold. He had not even the

wish to press her hand. The market held beautiful women of a like description. He wished simply to see her

proved the thing he read her to be: and not proved as such by himself. He was unable to summon or imagine

emotion enough for him to simulate the forms by which fair women are wooed to their perdition. For all he

cared, any man on earth might try, succeed or fail, as long as he had visual assurance that she coveted, a slave

to the pleasures commanded by the wealth once disdained by her. Till that time, he could not feel himself

Dame Gossip prefers to ejaculate, Young men are mysteries! and bowl us onward. No one ever did

comprehend the Earl of Fleetwood, she says: he was bad, he was good; he was whimsical and steadfast; a

splendid figure, a mark for ridicule; romantic and a close arithmetician; often a devil, sometimes the

In fine, he was a millionaire nobleman, owning to a considerable infusion of Welsh blood in the composition

of him. Now, to the Cymry and to the pure Kelt, the past is at their elbows continually. The past of their lives

has lost neither face nor voice behind the shroud; nor are the passions of the flesh, nor is the animate soul,

wanting to it. Other races forfeit infancy, forfeit youth and manhood with their progression to the wisdom age

may bestow. These have each stage always alive, quick at a word, a scent a sound, to conjure up scenes, in

spirit and in flame. Historically, they still march with Cadwallader, with Llewellyn, with Glendower; sing

with Aneurin, Taliesin, old Llywarch: individually, they are in the heart of the injury done them thirty years

back, or thrilling to the glorious deed which strikes an empty buckler for most of the sons of Time. An old

sea rises in them, rolling no phantom billows to break to spray against existing rocks of the shore. That is

why, and even if they have a dose of the Teuton in them, they have often to feel themselves exiles when still

Add to the single differentiation enormous wealthwe convulse the excellent Dame by terming it a chained

hurricane, to launch in foul blasts or beneficent showers, according to the moods during youthand the

composite Lord Fleetwood comes nearer into our focus. Dame Gossip, with her jigging to be at the

butterwoman's trot, when she is not violently interrupting, would suffer just punishment were we to digress

Wholly Cambrian Fleetwood was not. But he had to the full the Cambrian's reverential esteem for high

qualities. His good bye with Henrietta, and estimate of her, left a dusky mental void requiring an orb of

some sort for contemplation; and an idea of the totally contrary Carinthia, the woman he had avowedly

wedded, usurped her place. Qualities were admitted. She was thrust away because she had offended: still

more because he had offended. She bore the blame for forcing him to an examination of his conduct at this

point and that, where an ancestral savage in his lineaments cocked a strange eye. Yet at the moment of the act

of the deed he had known himself the veritable Fleetwood. He had now to vindicate himself by extinguishing

her under the load of her unwomanliness: she was like sundried linen matched beside oriental silk: she was

rough, crisp, unyielding. That was now the capital charge. Henrietta could never be guilty of the unfeminine.

It is of all questions the one causing young men to screw wry faces when they are asked; they do so love the

feminine, the ultrafeminine, whom they hate for her inclination to the frail. His depths were sounded, and he

answered independently of his will, that he must be up to the heroical pitch to decide. Carinthia stood near

him then. The confession was a step, and fraught with consequences. Her unacknowledged influence

expedited him to Sarah Winch's shop, for sight of one of earth's honest souls; from whom he had the latest of

He dined the host of his Ixionides, leaving them early for a drive at night Eastward, and a chat with old Mr.

Woodseer over his punching and sewing of his bootleather. Another honest soul. Mr. Woodseer thankfully

consented to mount his coachbox next day, and astonish Gower with a drop on his head from the skies about

AN August of gales and rains drove Atlantic air over the Welsh highlands. Carinthia's old father had

impressed on her the rapture of "smelling salt" when by chance he stood and threw up his nostrils to sniff

largely over a bed of bracken, that reminded him of his element, and her fancy would be at strain to catch his

once proud riding of the seas. She felt herself an elder daughter of the beloved old father, as she breathed it in

full volume from the billowy West one morning early after sunrise and walked sisterly with the farseen

inexperienced little maid, whom she saw trotting beside him through the mountain forest, listening, storing

This elder daughter had undergone a shipwreck; but clear proof that she had not been worsted was in the

unclouded liveliness of the younger one gazing forward. Imaginative creatures who are courageous will never

be lopped of the hopeful portion of their days by personal misfortune. Carinthia could animate both; it would

have been a hurt done to a living human soul had she suffered the younger self to run overcast. Only, the

gazing forward had become interdicted to her experienced self. Nor could she vision a future having any

horizon for her child. She saw it in bleak squares, and snuggled him between dangers weathered and dangers

The conviction that her husband hated her had sunk into her nature. Hating the mother, he would not love her

boy. They were burdens, and the heir of his House, child of a hated mother, was under perpetual menace from

an unscrupulous tyrannical man. The dread and antagonism were first aroused by the birth of her child. She

had not known while bearing him her present acute sensation of the hunted flying and at bay. Previously, she

could say: I did wrong here; I did wrong there. Distrust had brought the state of war, which allows not of the

Her husband fed her and he clothed her; the limitation of his bounty was sharply outlined. Sure of her

rectitude, a stranger to the world, she was not very sensible of dishonour done to her name. It happened at

times that her father inquired of her how things were going with his little Carin; and then revolt sprang up and

answered on his behalf rather fiercely. She was, however, prepared for any treaty including forgiveness, if

she could be at peace in regard to her boy, and have an income of some help to her brother. Chillon was

harassed on all sides; she stood incapable of aiding; so foolishly feeble in the shadow of her immense longing

to strive for him, that she could think her husband had purposely lamed her with an infant. Her love of her

brother, now the one man she loved, laid her insufficiency on the rack and tortured imbecile cries from it.

On the contrary, her strange husband had blest her with an infant. Everything was pardonable to him if he left

her boy untouched in the mother's charge. Much alone as she was, she raised the dead to pet and cherish her

boy. Chillon had seen him and praised him. Mrs. Owain Wythan, her neighbour over a hill, praised him

She was about to cross the hill and breakfast with Mrs. Wythan. The time for the weaning of the babe

approached, and had as prospect beyond it her dull fear that her husband would say the mother's work was

done, and seize the pretext to separate them: and she could not claim a longer term to be giving milk, because

her father had said: "Not a quarter of a month more than nine for the milk of the mother"or else the child

would draw an unsustaining nourishment from the strongest breast. She could have argued her exceptional

robustness against another than he. But the dead father wanting to build a great race of men and women ruled.

Carinthia knelt at the cradle of a princeling gone from the rich repast to his alternative kingdom.

"You will bring him over when he wakes," she said to Madge. "Mrs. Wythan would like to see him every

"She can walk and hold a child in her two arms, my lady," said Madge. "She expects miners popping up out

"They!they know him, they would not hurt him, they know my son," her mistress answered.

The population of the mines in revolt had no alarms for her. The works were empty down below. Men sat by

the wayside brooding or strolled in groups, now and then loudly exercising their tongues; or they stood in

How would her father have acted by these men? He would have been among them. Dissensions in his mine

were vapours of a day. Lords behaved differently. Carinthia fancied the people must regard their master as a

foreign wizard, whose power they felt, without the chance of making their cry to him heard. She, too, dealt

with a lord. It was now his wish for her to leave the place where she had found some shreds of a home in the

thought of being useful. She was gathering the people's language; many of their songs she could sing, and

please them by singing to them. They were not suspicious of her; at least, their women had open doors for

her; the men, if shy, were civil. She had only to go below, she was greeted in the quick tones of their speech

But none loved the castle, and she as little, saving the one room in it where her boy lay. The grey of Welsh

history knew a real castle beside the roaring brook frequently a torrent. This was an eighteenth century

castellated habitation on the verge of a small wood midway up the height, and it required a survey of

numberless happy recollections to illumine its walls or drape its chambers. The permanently lighted hearth of

a dear home, as in that forsaken unfavoured old white house of the wooded Austrian crags, it had not. Rather

it seemed a place waiting for an ill deed to be done in it and stop all lighting of hearths thereafter.

Out on the turf of the shaven hills, her springy step dispersed any misty fancies. Her shortwinged hive set to

work in her head as usual, building scaffoldings of great things to be done by Chillon, present evils escaped.

The rolling big bare hills with the riding clouds excited her as she mounted, and she was a figure of gladness

on the ridge bending over to hospitable Plas Llwyn, where the Wythans lived, entertaining rich and poor

alike. They had led the neighbourhood to call on the discarded Countess of Fleetwood.

A warm strain of arms about her neck was Carinthia's welcome from Mrs. Wythan lying along the couch in

her boudoir; an established invalid, who yearned sanely to life, and caught a spark of it from the guest eyed

"Our boy?our Chillon Kirby till he has his baptism names; he is well? I am to see him?"

"Ah, my dear," Mrs. Wythan sighed, imagining: "It would disappoint me if he did not wake me."

"I see him!" Mrs. Wythan cried. "He is part mine. He has taught Owain to love babies."

A tray of breakfast was placed before the countess. "Mr. Wythan is down among his men?" she said.

"Every morning, as long as this agitation lasts. I need not say, good appetite to you after your walk. You have

no fear of the men, I know. Owain's men are undisturbed; he has them in hand. Absentee masters can't expect

Drinking her tea, Carinthia's eyelids shut; she set down her cup. "If he must come," she said. "He wishes me

to leave. I am to go again where I have no friends, and no language to learn, and can be of no use. It is not for

me that I dread his coming. He speaks to command. The men ask to be heard. He will have submission first.

They do not trust him. His coming is a danger. For me, I should wish him to come. May I say? . . ."

"It is, I am with the men because I am so like them. I beg to be heard. He commands obedience. He is a great

nobleman, but I am the daughter of a greater man, and I have to say, that if those poor miners do harm, I will

not stand by and see an anger against injustice punished. I wish his coming, for him to agree upon the

Christian names of the boy. I feel his coming will do me injury in making me offend him worse. I would

avoid that. Oh, dear soul! I may say it to you:he cannot hurt me any more. I am spared loving him when I

"Let me say in my turn; I may help you, dear. You know I have my husband's love, as he mine. Am I, have I

ever been a wife to him? Here I lie, a dead weight, to be carried up and down, all of a wife that Owain has

had for years. I lie and pray to be taken, that my good man, my proved good man, may be free to choose a

healthy young woman and be rewarded before his end by learning what a true marriage is. The big simpleton

will otherwise be going to his grave, thinking he was married! I see him stepping about softly in my room, so

contented if he does not disturb me, and he crushes me with a desire to laugh at him while I worship. I tricked

him into marrying the prostrate invalid I am, and he can't discover the trick, he will think it's a wife he has,

instead of a doctor's doll. Oh! you have a strange husband, it has been a strange marriage for you, but you

have your invincible health, you have not to lie and feel the horror of being a deception to a guileless man,

whose love blindfolds him. The bitter ache to me is, that I can give nothing. You abound in power to give."

"My brother would not want, if I could give. He may have to sell out of the army, he thinks, fears; and I must

look on. Our mother used to say she had done something for her country in giving a son like Chillon to the

British army. Poor mother! Our bright opening days all seem to end in rain. We should turn to Mr. Wythan

"What I am!" Carinthia raised and let fall her head. "An example makes dwarfs of us. When Mr. Wythan

does penance for temper by descending into his mine and working among his men for a day with the pick,

seated, as he showed me down below, that is an example. If I did like that, I should have no fire damp in the

breast, and not such a task to forgive, that when I succeed I kill my feelings."

The entry of Madge and Martha, the nursegirl, with the overflowing armful of baby, changed their converse

"Kit Ines has arrived, my lady," Madge said. "I saw him on the road, and stopped a minute."

Mrs. Wythan studied Carinthia. Her sharp invalid's ears had caught the name. She beckoned. "The man

"It will be my child this time," said Carinthia; "I have no fear for myself." She was trembling, though her

features were hard for the war her lord had declared, as it seemed. "Did he tell you his business here?" she

"The `Welsh' are misunderstood by Lord Fleetwood," Mrs. Wythan said to Carinthia. "He should live among

them. They will not hurt their lady. Protecting may be his attention; but we will have our baby safe here.

"You read my wishes," Carinthia rejoined. "The man I do not think a bad man. He has a master. While I am

bound to my child I must be restful, and with the man at the castle Martha's goblins would jump about me

"We merely take a precaution, and I have the pleasure of it," said her hostess. "Give orders to your maid: not

As with the warmly hospitable, few were the words. Madge was promised by her mistress plenty of

opportunities daily for seeing Kit Ines, and her mouth screwed to one of women's dimples at a corner. She

went of in a cart to fetch boxes, thinking: We are a hunted lot! So she was not mildly disposed for the

England's champion lightweight thought it hard that his coming down to protect the castle against the

gibbering heathen Welsh should cause a clearing out, and solitariness for his portion.

"What's the good of innocence if you're always going to suspect a man!" he put it, like a true son of the

pirates turned traders. "I've got a paytron, and a man in my profession must have a paytron, or where is he?

Where's his money for a trial of skill? Say he saves and borrows and finds the lump to clap it down, and he's

knocked out o' time. There he is, bankrup', and a devil of a licking into the bargain. That's the cream of our

profession, if a man has got no paytron. No prizering can live without one. The odds are too hard on us. My

lady ought to take into account I behaved respectful when I was obliged to do my lord's orders and remove

her from our haunts, which wasn't to his taste. Here I'm like a cannon for defending the house, needs be, and

"It strikes me, Kit Ines, a man with a paytron is no better than a tool of a man," said Madge.

"And don't you go to be sneering at honest tools," Ines retorted. "When will women learn a bit of the world

before they're made hags of by old Father WearandTear! A young woman in her prime, you Madge! be

"Your paytron bid you steal off with my lady's child, Kit Ines, you'd do it to stock your shop."

Ines puffed. "If you ain't a girl to wallop the wind! Fancy me at that game! Is that why my ladybut I can't

be suspected that far? You make me break out at my pores. My paytron's a gentleman: he wouldn't ask and I

couldn't act such a part. Dear Lord! it'd have to be stealing off, for my lady can use a stick; and put it to the

choice between my lady and her child and any paytron living, paytron be damned, I'd say, rather'n go against

my notions of honour. Have you forgot all our old talk about the prizering, the nursery of honour in Old

"Ah! Women wants mastheading off and on, for 'em to have a bit of a lookout over life as it is. They go

stewing over books of adventure and drop into frights about awful man. Take me, now; you had a no small

admiration for my manly valour once, and you trusted yourself to me, and did you ever repent it? owning

"Drunk nor sober you won't. Serve a paytron, be a leper, you'll find, with all honest folk."

Ines shook out an execrating leg at the foul word. "Leper, you say? You say that? You say leper to me?"

"It's my reputation for decent treatment of a woman lets you say it, Madge Winch."

"Stick to that as long as your paytron consents. It's the one thing you've got left."

His tongue was checked. He swallowed the exceeding sourness of a retort undelivered, together with the

feeling that she beat him in the wrangle by dint of her being an unreasonable wench.

He stood by the cart, hands deep down his pockets, when she descended. She could have laughed at the

spectacle of a champion prizefighter out of employ, hulking idle, because he was dog to a patron; but her

"So you're off. What am I to tell my lord when he comes?" Kit growled. "His yacht's fetching for a Welsh

She counted it a piece of information gained, and jumped to her seat, bidding the driver start. To have pretty

well lost her character for a hero changed into a patron's dog, was a thought that outweighed the show of

incivility. Some little distance away, she reproached herself for not having been so civil as to inquire what

day my lord was expected, by his appointment. The girl reflected on the strangeness of a body of

THE earl was looked for at the chief office of the mines, and each day an expectation of him closed in

disappointment, leaving it to be surmised that there were more serious reasons for his continued absence

during a crisis than any discussed; whether indeed, as when a timepiece neglects to strike the hour which is,

by the reckoning of natural impatience, past, the capital charge of "crazy works" must not be brought against

a nobleman hitherto precise upon business, of a just disposition, fairly humane. For though he was an

absentee sucking the earth through a tube, in Ottoman ease, he had never omitted the duty of personally

attending on the spot to grave cases under dispute. The son of the hardheaded father came out at a crisis;

and not too highhandedly: he could hear an opposite argument to the end. Therefore, since he refused to

Irony perusing History offers the beaten and indolent a sugary acid in the indication of the spites and the

pranks, the whims and the tastes, at the springs of main events. It is, taken by itself, destructive nourishment.

But those who labour in the field to shovel the clods of earth to History, would be wiser of their fellows for a

minor dose of it. Mr. Howell Edwards consulting with Mr. Owain Wythan on the necessity, that the earl

should instantly keep his promise to appear among the men and stop the fermentation, as in our younger days

a lordly owner still might do by small concessions and the physical influencethe nervecharmcould

suppose him to be holding aloof for his pleasure or his pride; perhaps because of illness or inability to

conceive the actual situation at a distance. He mentioned the presence of the countess, and Mr. Wythan

mentioned it, neither of them thinking a rational man would so play the lunatic as to let men starve, and

Sullen days went by. On these days of the slatecloud or the leadenwinged, Carinthia walked over the hills

to her staring or downeyed silent people, admitted without a welcome at some doors, rejected at some. Her

baskets from the castle were for the most part received as graciously. She continued to direct them for

delivery where they were needed, and understood why a charity that supplied the place of justice was not

thanked. She and her people here were one regarding the master, as she had said. They could not hurt her

sensitiveness, she felt too warmly with them. And here it was not the squalid, flat, bricked east corner of

London at the close of her daily pilgrimage. Up from the solitary street of the slateroofs, she mounted a big

hill and had the life of high breathing. A perpetual escape out of the smoky, grimy city mazes was trumpeted

to her in the winds up there: a recollected contrast lightened the skyless broad spaces overhead almost to

sunniness. Having air of the hills and activity for her limbs, she made sunshine for herself. Regrets were at no

Look backward only to correct an error of conduct for the next attempt, says one of her father's Maxims; as

sharply bracing for women as for men. She did not look back to moan. Now that her hunger for the safety of

her infant was momentarily quieted, she could see Kit Ines hanging about the lower ground, near the

alehouse, and smile at Madge's comparison of him to a drummedout soldier, who would like to be taken

He saluted; under the suspicion of his patron's lady his legs were hampered, he dared not approach her;

though his innocence of a deed not proposed to him yetand all to stock that girl Madge's shop, if

done!knocked at his ribs with fury to vindicate himself before the lady and her maid. A gentleman met

And two Taffy gentlemen would hardly be sufficient for the purpose, supposing an illused Englishman

inclined to block their way!What, and play footpad, Kit Ines? No, it's just a game in the head. But a true

Next day there were the two gentlemen to conduct the lady and her maid; and Taffy the first walks beside the

countess; and that girl Madge trudges along with no other than my lord's Mr. Woodseer, chattering like a

wateringcan on a gardenbed: deuce a glance at Kit Ines. How can she keep it up and the gentleman no

more than nodding? How does he enjoy playing second fiddle with the maid while Mr. tall brownface Taffy

violins it to her ladyship a stone's throw in front?Ines had less curiosity to know the object of Mr.

Woodseer's appearance on the scene. Idle, unhandsomely treated, and a cave of the yawns, he merely

"Yes, there he is, don't look at him," Madge said to Gower; "and whatever he's here for, he has a bad time of

it, and rather more than it's pleasant for him to think over, if a slave to a `paytron' thinks at all. I won't judge

him; my mistress is bitten with the fear for the child, worse than ever. And the earl, my lord, not coming, and

he wanting her to move again, seems to her he durstn't do it here and intends to snap at the child on the road.

She's forced to believe anything of such a husband and father. And why does he behave so? I can't spell it.

He's kind to my Sallyyou've seen the Piccadilly shop? because she was . . . she did her best in love and

duty for my lady. And behaves like a husband hating his wife's life on earth! When he went down with good

Mr. Woodseer, and called on Sally, pretending to inquire, after she was kidnapped by that Kit Ines acting to

please his paytron, he must be shown up to the room where she slept, and stands at the door and peeps in,

Sally's letter says, and asks if he may enter the room. He went to the window looking on the chimneys she

used to see, and touched an ornament over the fireplace, called grandfather's pigtail casehe was a sailor;

only a ridiculous piece of china, that made my lady laugh about the story of its holding a pigtail. But he turns

it over because she didSally told him. He couldn't be pretending when he bought the beautiful shop and

stocked it for Sally. He gets her lots of customers; and no rent to pay till next Michaelmas a year. She's a

made woman through him. He said to her, he had heard from Mr. Woodseer the Countess of Fleetwood called

"The Countess of Fleetwood called both of you her sisters, I think," said Gower.

"Please, Mr. Gower, don't say that; you'll make me cry. He keeps his wife so poor she hasn't a shilling of her

own; she wearies about her brother; she can't help. He can spend hundreds on my Sally for having been good

to her, in our small wayit's a fairy tale; and he won't hear of money for his wife, except that she's never to

"Me. I'm `a pugilist's wench'I've heard myself called. She was the first who gave me a lift; never mind me.

"Take her?reason with her as to the best we can do. He holds off from a meeting just now. I fancy he's

wearing round to it. His keeping his wife without money passes comprehension. After serving him for a few

months, I had a store invested to support me for yearsas much as I need before I join the ranks of the pen. I

was at my reading and writing and drowsing, and down he rushes: I'm in harness again. I can't say it's dead

waste of time; besides I pick up an independence for the days ahead. But I don't respect myself for doing the

work. Here's the difFerence between us two servants, Madge: I think of myself, and you don't."

"The difference is more like between the master and mistress we serve, Mr. Gower."

"You know the reputation I've got. And can only just read, and can't spell. My mistress teaches me bits of

Gower took a new observation of this girl, whom he had not regarded as like himself, a pushing blade among

the grasses. He proposed to continue her lessons, if she cared to learn; saying it could be done in letters.

"I won't be ashamed of writing, if you mean it," said she. "My mistress will have a usefuller servant. She had

a strange honeymoon of a marriage, if ever was; and told me t'other day she was glad because it brought us

"A fling above born ladies. She's quick as light to hit on a jewel where there is one, whether it shines or not.

"Yes," Madge said, panting for more. "Do speak of her. When you praise her, I feel she's not wasted.

Mistress; and friend and wifeif he'd let her be; and mother; never mother like her. The boy'll be a sturdy.

The question was a drop on lower spheres, and it required definitions, to touch the exact nature of the form of

beauty, and excuse a cooler tone on the commoner plane. These demanded language. She rounded the

difficulty, saying: "You see engravings of archery; that's her figureher real figure. I think her face . . . I

"That's it," said Gower, delighted with his perception of a bare mind at work and hitting the mark perforce of

warmth. "When it flashes, it's unequalled. There's the supremacy of irregular lines. People talk of perfect

beauty: suitable for paintings and statues. Living faces, if they're to show the soul, which is the star on the

peak of beauty, must lend themselves to commotion. Nature does it in a breezy tree or over ruffled waters.

Repose has never such splendid reach as animationI mean, in the living face. Artists prefer repose. Only

Nature can express the uttermost beauty with her gathering and tuning of discords. Well, your mistress has

that beauty. I remember my impression when I saw her first on her mountains abroad. Other beautiful faces

of women go pale, grow stale. The diversified in the harmony of the flash are Nature's own, her radiant, made

of her many notes, beyond our dreams to reproduce. We can't hope to have a true portrait of your mistress.

The literary dose was a strong one for her; but she saw the index, and got a lift from the sound. Her bosom

heaved. "Oh, I do try, Mr. Gower. I think I do a little. I do more while you're talking. You are good to talk so

to me. You should have seen her the night she went to meet my lord at those beastly Gardens Kit Ines told me

he was going to. She was defending him. I've no words. You teach me what's meant by poetry. I couldn't

Their eyes were on the countess and her escort in advance. Gower's praises of her mistress's peculiar beauty

set the girl compassionately musing. His eloquence upon the beauty was her clue.

Carinthia and Mr. Wythan started at a sharp trot in the direction of the pair of ponies driven by a groom along

It concerned the house and the master of it. His groom drove rapidly down, while he hurried on the

homeward way, as a man will do, with the dread upon him that his wife's last breath may have been yielded

Carinthia walked to be overtaken, not daring to fever her blood at a swifter pace; "lamed with an infant," the

"She is very ill, she has fainted, she lies insensible," Madge heard from her of Mrs. Wythan. "We were

speaking of her when the groom appeared. It has happened twice. They fear the third. He fears it, though he

laughs at a superstition. Now step, I know you like walking, Mr. Woodseer. Once I left you behind."

They were soon speculating on the unimpressionable house in its clump of wood midway below, which had

A maidservant at the garden gate, by Mr. Wythan's orders, informed Carinthia that her mistress had opened

her eyes. There was a hope of weathering the ominous third time. But the hope was a bird of short flight from

bush to bush until the doctor should speak to confirm it. Even the child was under the shadow of the house.

Carinthia had him in her arms, trusting to life as she hugged him, and seeing innumerable darts out of all

"She wishes to have you," Mr. Wythan came and said to her. "Almost her first word. The heart is quickening.

Rebecca Wythan had strength to press Carinthia's hand faintly. She made herself heard: "No pain." Her

husband sat upright, quite still, attentive for any sign. His look of quiet pleasure ready to show sprightliness

dwelt on her. She returned the look, unable to give it greeting. Past the sense of humour, she wanted to say:

"See the poor simple fellow who will think it a wife that he has!" She did but look.

Carinthia spoke his name, "Mr. Wythan," by chance, and Rebecca breathed heavily until she formed the

It was in the mind of the sick lady to disburden herself of more than her weakness could utter, so far was she

above earthly links. The desire in her was to be quit of the flesh, bearing a picture of her husband as having

Her recovered strength next day brought her nearer to our laws. "You will call him Owain, Carinthia?" she

said. "He is not one to presume on familiarity. I must be going soon. I cannot leave him the wife I would

choose. I can leave him the sister. He is a sure friend. He is the knightly man women dream of. I harp on it

because I long for testimony that I leave him to have some reward. And this may be, between two so pure at

"Dear soul! friend, yes, and Owain, yes, I can say it," Carinthia rejoined. "Brother? I have only my Chillon.

My life is now for him. I am punished for separating myself from the son of my father. I have no heart for a

second brother. What I can give to my friend I will. I shall love you in him, if I am to lose you."

"Not Owainit was I was the wretch refused to call on the lonely lady at the castle until I heard she had

done a romantic little bit of thinghushed a lambkin's bleating. My loss! my loss! And I could afford it so

poorly. Since then Carinthia has filled my days. I shudder to leave you and think of your going back to the

English. Their sneer withers. They sent you down among us as a young woman to be shunned."

"I did wildly, I was ungoverned, I had one idea," said Carinthia. "One idea is a bullet, good for the day of

battle to beat the foe, father tells us. It was a madness in me. Now it has gone, I see all round. I see straight,

too. With one idea, we see nothingnothing but itself. Whizz! we go. I did. I shall no longer offend in that

"I am not alarmed. It is to requestthey would have me gone, to prepare the way for my lord."

"You have done it; he has the castle to himself. I cannot spare you. A tyrant ordering you to go should be

"We have talked: we shall be reproved by the husband and the doctor," said Carinthia.

Sullen days continued and rolled over to night at the mines. Gower's mission was rendered absurd by the

countess's withdrawal from the castle. He spoke of it to Mr. Wythan once, and the latter took a big breath and

blew such a lord to the winds. "Persuade our guest to leave us, that the air may not be tainted for her husband

when he comes? He needn't call; he's not obliged to see her. She's offered Esslemont to live in? I believe her

instinct's righthe has designs on the child. A little more and we shall have a mad dog in the fellow. He

doubles my work by keeping his men out. If she were away we should hear of black doings. Twenty dozen of

They agreed that persuasions need not be addressed to the countess. She was and would remain Mr. Wythan's

guest. As for the earl, Gower inclined to plead hesitatingly, still to plead, on behalf a nobleman owning his

influence and very susceptible to his wisdom, whose echo of a pointed saying nearly equalled the satisfaction

bestowed by print. The titled man affected the philosopher in that manner; or rather, the crude philosopher's

relish of brilliant appreciation stripped him of his robe. For he was with Owain Wythan at heart to scorn titles

which did not distinguish practical offices. A nation bowing to them has gone to pith, for him; he had to

shake himself, that he might not similarly stick; he had to do it often. Objects elevated even by a decayed

world have their magnetism for us unless we nerve the mind to wakeful repulsion. He protested he had reason

to think the earl was humanizing, though he might be killing a woman in the process. "Could she wish for

better?" he asked, with at least the gravity of the undermining humorist; and he started Owain to course an

idea when he remarked of Lord Fleetwood: "Imagine a devil on his back on a river, flying a cherub."

"Ay, but while he's floating, his people are edging on starvation. And I've a personal grievance. I keep, you

know, open hall, bread and cheese and beer, for poor mates. His men are favouring us with a call. We have to

cart treble from the town. If I straighten the sticks he tries to bend, it'll be a grievance against meand a fig

for it! But I like to be at peace with my neighbours, and waft them penillion instead of dealing the cleddyfal

His countess was little moved by it; and the reason for that lay in her imagination being absorbed. Henrietta

had posted her a journal telling of a deed of Chillon's: no great feat, but precious for its "likeness to him," as

they phrased it; that is, for the light it cast on their conception of the man. Heading a squadron in a riotous

Midland town, he stopped a charge, after fire of a shot from the mob, and galloped up the street to catch a

staggering urchin to his saddlebow, and place the mite in safety. Then it was a simple trot of the hussars

Now, to see what banquet there is for the big of heart in the world's hot stress, take the view of Carinthia, to

whom her brother's thoughtful little act of gentleness at the moment of the redofthepowder smoke was

divinest bread and wine, when calamity hung around, with the future an unfooted wilderness, her powers

THE most urgent of Dames is working herself up to a grey squall in her detestation of imagerial epigrams.

Otherwise Gower Woodseer's dash at the quintessential young man of wealth would prompt to the carrying of

it further, and telling how the tethered flutterer above a "devil on his back on a river" was beginning to pull if

Fleetwood had almost a desire to see the small dot of humanity which drew the breath from him;and was

indistinguishably the bubbly grin and gurgle of the nurses, he could swear. He kicked at the bondage to our

common fleshly nature imposed on him by the mother of the little animal. But there had been a mother to this

father: odd movements of a warmish curiosity brushed him when the cynic was not mounting guard. They

were, it seemed, externalno part of him: like blasts of a wayside furnace across wintry air. They were, as it

chanced, Nature's woman in him plucking at her separated partner, Custom's man; something of an oriental

voluptuary on his isolated regal seat; and he would suck the pleasures without a descent into the stale old ruts

There was also a cold curiosity to see the male infant such a mother would have. The grandson of Old

That mother, too, who must have been a touch astonished to find herself a mother:Fleetwood laughed a

curt bark, and heard rebukes, and pleaded the marriagetrap to the man of his word; devil and cherub were at

the tug, or say, dog and gentleman, a survival of the schoolboy:that mother, a girl of the mountains,

perhaps wanted no more than smoothing by the world. "It is my husband" sounded foolish, sounded

freshish,a new note. Would she repeat it? The bit of simplicity would bear repeating once. Gower

Woodseer says the creature grows and studies to perfect herself. She's a good way off that, and may spoil

herself in the process; but she has a certain power. Her donkey obstinacy in refusing compliance, and her

pursuit of "my husband," and ability to drench him with ridicule, do not exhibit the ordinary young female.

She stamps her impression on the people she meets. Her husband is shaken to confess it likewise, despite a

He has owned he is her husband: he has not disavowed the consequence. That fellow, Gower Woodseer,

might accuse the husband of virtually lying, if he by his conduct implied her distastefulness or worse. By

heaven! as felon a deed as could be done. Argue the case anyhow, it should be undone. Let her but cease to

madden. For whatever the rawness of the woman, she has qualities; and experience of the facile loves of

London very sharply defines her qualities. Think of her as raw, she has the gift of rareness: forget the donkey

obstinacy, her character grasps. In the grasp of her character, one inclines, and her husband inclines, to

The wealthy young noble prized any form of rareness wherever it was visible, having no thought of the

purchase of it, except with worship. He could listen pleased to the talk of a Methodist minister sewing

bootleather. He picked up a roadside tramp and made a friend of him, and valued the fellow's honesty,

submitted to his lectures, pardoned his insolence. The sight of Carinthia's narrow bedroom and strip of bed

over Sarah Winch's Whitechapel shop had gone a step to drown the bobbing Whitechapel Countess. At least,

he had not been hunted by that gaunt chalkquarry ghost since his peep into the room. Own it! she likewise

has things to forgive. Women nurse their larv� of ideas about fair dealing. But observe the distinction: and if

women understood justice they would be the first to proclaim, that when two are tied together, the one who

does the other serious injury is more naturally excused than the one who tenfold abhorrent if a

With this apology for himself, Lord Fleetwood grew tolerant of the person honourably avowed as his wife.

So, therefore, the barrier between him and his thoughts of her was broken. The thoughts carrying red roses

were selected. Finally, the taste to meet her sprouted. If agreeable, she could be wooed; if barely agreeable,

Although it was the hazard of a die, he decided to follow his taste. Her stay at the castle had kept him long

from the duties of his business; and he could imagine it a grievance if he pleased, but he put it aside.

Alighting at his chief manager's office, he passed through the heated atmosphere of blackbrowed, wiry little

rebels, who withheld the salute as they lounged: a posture often preceding the spring in compulsorily idle

workers. He was aware of instinct abroad, an antagonism to the proprietor's rights. They roused him to stand

by them, and were his own form of instinct, handsomely clothed. It behoved that he should examine them and

the claims against them, to be sure of his ground. He and Mr. Howell Edwards debated the dispute for an

hour; agreeing, partially differing. There was a weakness on the principle in Edwards. These fellows fixed to

the spot are for compromise too much. An owner of mines has no steady reckoning of income if the rate of

wage is perpetually to shift according to current, mostly ignorant, versions of the prosperity of the times. Are

we so prosperous? It is far from certain. And if the rate ascends, the question of easing it down to suit the

discontinuance of prosperity agitating our exchequerwhose demand is for fixityperplexes us further.

However, that was preliminary. He and Howell Edwards would dine and wrangle it out. The earl knew

himself a hot disputant after dinner. Incidentally he heard of Lady Fleetwood as a guest of Mrs. Wythan; and

the circumstance was injurious to him because he stood against Mr. Wythan's pampering system with his

Ines up at the castle smelt of beer, and his eyelids were sottish. Nothing to do tries the virtue of the best. He

sought his excuse in a heavy lamentation over my lady's unjust suspicion of him,a known man of honour,

The cause of Lady Fleetwood's absence was exposed to her outraged lord, who had sent the man purely to

protect her at this castle, where she insisted on staying. The suspicion cast on the dreary lusher was the wife's

wild shot at her husband. One could understand a silly woman's passing terror. Her acting under the dictate of

it struck the husband's ribbed breast as a positive clap of hostilities between them across a chasm.

His previous placable mood was immediately conceived by him to have been one of his fits of generosity; a

step to a frightful, dutiful embrace of an almost repulsive object. He flung the thought of her back on her

Whitechapel. She returned from that place with smiles, dressed in a laundry white with a sprinkle of smuts,

appearing to him as an adversary armed and able to strike. There was a blow, for he chewed resentments; and

these were goaded by a remembered shyness of meeting her eyes when he rounded up the slope of the hill, in

view of his castle, where he supposed she would be awaiting "my husband." The silence of her absence was

"The countess likes the air of this country," said Gower, evasively, impertinently, and pointlessly; offensively

There the matter ended; for Fleetwood fell to talking of the mines. At dinner and after dinner it was the topic,

When the man who has a heart will talk of nothing but what concerns his interests, and the heart is hurt, it

may be perceived by a cognizant friend, that this is his proud, mute way of petitioning to have the tenderer

subject broached. Gower was sure of the heart, armoured or bandaged though it was,a haunt of evil spirits

as well,and he began: "Now to speak of me half a minute. You cajoled me out of my Surrey room, where I

"I've had the scene before me!" the earl interposed. "Juniper dells and that tree of the flashing leaf, and that

dear old boy, your father, young as you and me, and saying love of Nature gives us eternal youth. On with

"I doubted whether I should be of use to you. I told you the amount of alloy in my motives. A year with you,

"The request is, for you to spare pain by taking one stepan extra strain on the muscles of the leg. It's only

"Why have me with you, then? I'm useless. But you read us all, see everything, and wait only for the mood to

do the right. You read me, and I'm not open to everybody. You read the crux of a man like me in my novel

position. You read my admiration of a beautiful woman and effort to keep honest. You read my downright

preference of what most people would call poverty, and my enjoyment of good cookery and good company.

You enlist among the crew below as one of our tempters. You find I come round to the thing I like best.

Therefore, you have your liking for me; and that's why you turn to me again, after your natural infidelities. So

much for me. You read this priceless lady quite as clearly. You choose to cloud her with your moods. She

was at a disadvantage, arriving in a strange country, nest to friendless; and each new incident bred of a

Fleetwood nodded. "You are read without the words. You read in history, too, I suppose, that there are two

sides to most cases. The loudest is not often the strongest. However, now the lady shows herself crazed.

That's reading her charitably. Else she has to be taken for a spiteful shrew, who pretends to suspect anything

"Crazed, is a wide shot and hits half the world," muttered Gower. "Lady Fleetwood had a troubled period

after her marriage. She suffered a sort of kidnapping when she was bearing her child. There's a book by an

Edinburgh doctor might be serviceable to you. It enlightens me. She will have a distrust of you, as regards the

"Such animals these women are! Good Lord!" Fleetwood ejaculated. "I marry one, and I'm to take to reading

"You speak that of women and pretend to love Nature," said Gower. "You hate Nature unless you have it

served on a dish by your own cook. That's the way to the madhouse or the monastery. There we expiate the

sin of sins. A man finds the woman of all women fitted to stick him in the soil, and trim and point him to

grow, and she's an animal for her pains! The secret of your malady is, you've not yet, though you're on a

healthy leap for the practices of Natures hopped to the primary conception of what Nature means. Women are

in and of Nature. I've studied them herehad nothing to do but study them. That most noble of ladies' whole

mind was knotted to preserve her child during her time of endurance up to her moment of trial. Think it over.

It's your one chance of keeping sane. And expect to hear flat stuff from me while you go on playing tyrant."

Fleetwood passed from a meditative look to a malicious half laugh. "You seem to have studied the `most

noble of ladies' latterly rather like a barrister with a brief for the defendant plaintiff, if you like!"

"As to that, I'll help you to an insight of a particular weakness of mine," said Gower. "I require to have

persons of even the highest value presented to me on a stage, or else I don't grasp them at allthey're simply

pictures. I saw the lady; admired, esteemed, sufficiently, I supposed, until her image appeared to me in the

feelings of another. Then I saw fathoms. No doubt, it was from feeling warmer. I went through the blood of

Fleetwood's hard stare melted to surprise and contemptuous amusement. "You see the lady to be the `most

noble of ladies' through the warming you get by passing into the feelings of Madge Winch?"

Sarcasm was in the tone, and beneath it a thrill of compassionateness traversed him and shot a remorseful

sting with the vision of those two young women on the coach at the scene of the fight. He had sentience of

their voices, nigh to hearing them. The forlorn bride's hand given to the anxious girl behind her flashed an

image of the sisterhood binding women under the pangs they suffer from men. He craved a scourging that he

might not be cursing himself; and he provoked it, for Gower was very sensitive to a cold breath on the

weakness he had laid bare; and when Fleetwood said: "You recommend a bath in the feelings of Madge

"A question of the man or the monk with you, as I fancy I've told you more than once!"

They sat in dumbness, fidgeted, sprang to their feet, and lighted bedroom candles.

Mounting the stairs, Gower was moved to let fall a benevolent look on the worried son of fortune. "I warned

you I should try you. It ought to be done politely. If I have to speak a truth I'm boorish. The divinely

damnable naked truth won't wear ornaments. It's about the same as pitching a handful of earth."

"You dirt your hands, hit or miss. Out of this corridor! Into my room, and spout your worst," cried the earl.

"You're a milder boor when you smoke. That day down in Surrey with the grand old bootmaker was one of

our days, Gower Woodseer! There's no smell of the boor in him. Perhaps his religion helps him, more than

Natureworship: not the best for manners. You won't smoke your pipe?a cigar? Lay on, then, as hard as

"You're asking for the debauchee's last luxurynot a correction," said Gower, grimly thinking of how his

whip might prove effective and punish the man who kept him fruitlessly out of his bed.

"I want stuff for a place in the memory," said Fleetwood; and the late hour, with the profitless talk, made it a

"You hang for the Fates to settle which is to be smothered in you, the man or the lordand it ends in the

"A bit of a scorpion in his intention," Fleetwood muttered on a stride. "I'll tell you this, Gower Woodseer;

when you lay on in earnest, your diction is not so choice. Do any of your remarks apply to Lady Fleetwood?"

"Lady Fleetwood is not the person to complain or condescend to speak of injuries."

A swollen vein on the young nobleman's forehead went to confirm the idea at the Wythans that he was

capable of mischief. They were right; he was as capable of villainy as of nobility. But he happened to be

thanking Gower Woodseer's whip for the comfortable numbness he felt at Carinthia's behaviour, while

detesting her for causing him to desire it and endure it, and exonerate his prosy castigator.

He was ignorant of the revenge he had on Gower, whose diction had not been particularly estimable. In the

feebleness of a man vainly courting sleep, the disarmed philosopher tossed from one side to the other through

the remaining hours of darkness, polishing sentences that were natural spouts of choicest diction; and still the

earl's virulent small sneer rankled. He understood why, after a time. The fervour of advocacy, which inspires

high diction, had been wanting. He had sought more to lash the earl with his personal disgustand partly to

parade his contempt of a lucrative dependencythan he had felt for the countess. No wonder his diction was

poor. It was a sample of limp thinness; a sort of tongue of a Master Slender: flavourless, unsatisfactory,

considering its object: measured to be condemned by its poor achievement. He had nevertheless a heart to

feel for the dear lady, and heat the pleading for her, especially when it ran to its object, as along a shaft of the

He brooded over it till it was like a fire beneath him to drive him from his bed and across the turfy roller of

the hill to the Wythans', in the front of an autumnal sunrisegrand where the country is shorn of surface

decoration, as here and there we find some unadorned human creature, whose bosom bears the ball of

SEATED at his breakfasttable, the earl saw Gower stride in, and could have wagered he knew the

destination of the fellow's morning walk. It concerned him little; he would be leaving the castle in less than

an hour. She might choose to come or choose to keep away. The whims of animals do not affect men unless

they are professionally tamers. Petty domestic dissensions are besides poor webs to the man pulling single

handed at ropes with his revolted miners. On the topic of wages, too, he was Gower's master, and could hold

forth: by which he taught himself to feel that practical affairs are the proper business of men, women and

infants being remotely secondary; the picturesque and poetry, consequently, sheer nonsense.

"I suppose your waiting here is useless, to quote you," he said. "The countess can decide now to remain, if

she pleases. Drive with me to CardiffI miss you if you're absent a week. Or is it legs? Drop me a line of

Gower spoke of starting his legs next day, if he had to do the journey alone: and he clouded the yacht for

Fleetwood with talk of the Wye and the Usk, Hereford and the Malvern Hills elliptical over the plains.

"Yes," the earl acquiesced jealously; "we ought to have seen tramped every foot of our own country. That

yacht of mine, there she is, and I said I would board her and have a fly with half a dozen fellows round the

They strolled down to Howell Edwards' office at nine, Kit Ines beside the luggage cart to the rear.

Around the office and along to the street of the cottages crowds were chattering, gesticulating; Ines fancied

the foreign jabberers inclined to threaten. Howell Edwards at the door of his office watched them

calculatingly. The lord of their destinies passed in with him, leaving Gower to study the features of the men,

Fleetwood came out presently, saying to Edwards: "That concession goes far enough. Because I have a

neighbour who yields at every step? No, stick to the principle. I've said my final word. And here's the

carriage. If the mines are closed, more's the pity: but I'm not responsible. You can let them know if you like,

The carriage was ready. Gower cast a glance up the hill. Three female figures and a pannierdonkey were

visible on the descent. He nodded to Edwards, who took the words out of his mouth. "Her ladyship, my lord."

She was distinctly seen, and looked formidable in definition against the cloud. Madge and the nursemaid

Martha were the two other young women. On they came, and the angry man seated in the carriage could not

give the order to start. Nor could he quite shape an idea of annoyance, though he hung to it and faced at

Gower a battery of the promise to pay him for this. Tattling observers were estimated at their small

importance there, as everywhere, by one so high above them. But the appearance of the woman of the

burlesque name and burlesque actions, and odd ascension out of the ludicrous into a form to cast a spell, so

that she commanded serious recollections of her, disturbed him. He stepped from his carriage. Again he had

his incomprehensible fit of shyness; and a vision of the complacent, jowled, redundant, bluecoated monarch

aswing in imbecile merriment on the signboard of the Royal Sovereign inn; constitutionally his total opposite,

In that respect his countess and he had shifted characters. Carinthia came on at her bold mountain stride to

within hail of him. Met by Gower, she talked, smiled, patted her donkey, clutched his ear, lifted a silken

covering to show the child asleep; entirely at her ease and unhurried. These women get an aid from their

pride of maternity. And when they can boast a parson behind them, they are indecorous up to insolent in their

She resumed her advance, with a slight abatement of her challenging match, sedately; very collectedly erect;

He heard her voice addressing Gower: "Yes, they do; we noticed the slateroofs, looking down on them.

They do look like a council of rooks in the hollow; a parliament, you said. They look exceedingly like, when

Is the man unsympathetic with women a hater of Nature deductively? Most women are actresses. As to

worshipping Nature, we go back to the state of heathen beast, Mr. Philosopher Gower could be answered. . . .

Fleetwood drew in his argument. She stood before him. There was on his part an insular representation of old

French Court salute to the lady, and she replied to it in the exactest measure, as if an instructed proficient.

She stood unshadowed. "We have come to bid you adieu, my lord," she said, and no trouble of the bosom

shook her mellow tones. Her face was not the chalkquarry or the rosed rock; it was oddly individual, and, in

a way, alluring, with some gentle contraction of her eyelids. But evidently she stood in full repose, mistress

Upon him, it appeared, the whole sensibility of the situation was to be thrown. He hardened.

"We have had to settle business here," he said, speaking resonantly, to cover his gazing discomposedly, all

The child was shown, still asleep. A cunning infant: not a cry in him to excuse a father for preferring concord

"He is a strong boy," the mother said. "Our doctor promises he will ride over all the illnesses."

Fleetwood's answer set of with an alarum of the throat, and dwindled to "We'll hope so. Seems to sleep well."

She had her rocky brows. They were not barren crags, and her shape was Nature's ripeness, it was

acknowledged. She stood like a lance in airrather like an Amazon schooled by Athene, one might imagine.

Hues of some going or coming flush hinted the magical trick of her visage. She spoke in modest manner, or it

"Bull." The loutish derision passed her and rebounded on him. "That would be quite at home."

"Oh, certainly, if you desire it, choose. There are four names you will find in a book of the Peerage or

Directory or so. Up at the castleor you might have written:better than these questions on the public road.

"Pray," he said, with courteous patience, and stepped forward down to the street of the miners' cottages. She

"Perfectly safe! no harm possible," said he, fretful under the burden of this her maniacal maternal anxiety.

"The men are all right, they would not hurt a child. What can rationally be suspected!"

"I know the men; they love their children," she replied. "I think my child would be precious to them. Mr.

"Is the one more requestI mean, a mother's anxiety does not run to the extent of suspecting everybody?"

"Some of the children are very pretty," said Carinthia, and eyed the bands of them at their games in the

Her eyes were homely, though they were so much a morning over her face. They were open now to what that

fellow Woodseer (who could speak to the point when he was not aiming at it) called the parlour, or social

sittingroom; where we may have converse with the tame woman's mind, seeing the door to the clawing

"Forgive me if I say you talk like the bigger child," Fleetwood said lightly, not ungenially; for the features he

Her answer chilled him. "It is true, my lord. I will not detain you. I would beg to be supplied with money."

He was like the leaves of a frosted plant, in his crisp curling inward:he had been so genial.

"You have come to say goodbye, that you may have an opportunity toas you put itbeg for money. I am

"Tenand it's a task to spend the sum on a single household shall be allotted to your expenditure at

Esslemont;stables, bills, et c�tera. You can entertain. My steward Leddings will undertake the

Her head acknowledged the graciousness. "I would have two thousand pounds and live where I please."

"Pardon me: the two, for a lady living where she pleases, exceeds the required amount."

"Edwards here has a provision for the hospital needs of the people. Mr. Woodseer applies to me in cases he

"I am glad, I am thankful. The money I would have is for my own use. It is for me."

The remark should have struck home. He had a thirst for the sign of her confessing to it. He looked.

She gathered up her skirts. Without a word to him, she ran, and running shouted to the little ones around and

ahead: "In! in! indoors, children! Blant, i'r ty! Mothers, mothers, ho! get them in. See the dog! Ci! Ci! In with

A big black mongrel appeared worrying at one of two petticoated urchins on the ground.

She scurried her swiftest, with such warning Welsh as she had on the top of her mountain cry; and doors flew

wide, there was a bang of doors when she darted by: first gust of terrible heavens that she seemed to the

Other shouts behind her rent the air, gathering to a roar, from the breasts of men and women. "Mad dog

about" had been for days the rumour, crossing the hills over the line of village, hamlet, farm, from Cardiff

Dead hush succeeded the burst. Men and women stood off. The brute was at the lady.

Her arms were straight above her head; her figure overhanging, on a bend of the knees. Right and left, the

fury of the slavering fangs shook her loose droop of gown; and a dull, prolonged growl, like the clamour of a

He held no weapon. The sweat of his forehead half blinded him. And she waved him behind her, beckoned to

the crowd to keep wide way, used her lifted hands as flappers; she had all her wits. There was not a wrinkle

of a grimace. Nothing but her locked lips betrayed her vision of imminent doom. The shaking of her gown

The brute dropped hold. With a weariful jog of the head, it pursued its course at an awful even swinging

Carinthia's cry rang for clear way to be kept on either side, and that accursed went the path through a

sharpedged mob, as it poured pellmell and shrank back, closing for the chase to rear of it.

"Father taught me," she said to the earl, not more discomposed than if she had taken a jump.

"It's over!" he groaned, savagely white, and bellowed for guns, any weapons. "Your father? pray?" She was

"Yes, it must be shot; it will be merciful to kill it," she said. "They have carried the child indoors. The others

are safe. Mr. Woodseer, run to my nursegirl, Martha. He goes," she murmured, and resumed to the earl:

"Father told me women have a better chance than men with a biting dog. He put me before him and drilled

me. He thought of everything. Usually the poor beast snapsone angry bite, not more. My dress teased it."

Fleetwood grinned civilly in his excitement; intending to yield patient hearing, to be interested by any mortal

"No, dear girl, not hurt, no scratch,only my gown torn," she said to Madge; and Madge heaved and

whimpered, and stooped to pin the frayed strips. "Quite safe; you see it is easy for women to escape, Mr.

Carinthia's voice hummed over the girl's head: "Father made me practise it, in case. He forethought. Madge,

you heard of this dog. I told you how to act. I was not feverish. Our babe will not feel it."

She bade Madge open her hands. "A scratch would kill. Never mind the tearings; I will hold my dress. Oh!

there is that one child bitten. Mr. Edwards, mount a man for the doctor. I will go in to the child. He was

The child's mother was red eyes at her door for ease of her heart to the lady. Carinthia stepped into the room,

"God in heaven! she can't be going to suck the bite?" Fleetwood cried to Madge, whose answer was

His heart sprang with a lighted comprehension of Gower Woodseer's meaning. This girl's fervour opened

PUSHING through a swarm into the cot, Fleetwood saw Carinthia on a knee beside a girl's lap, where the

A sting of pain touched the memory of its fright, and brought further screams, then the sobs. Carinthia

She glanced up; she said to the earl: "The bite was deep; it was in the blood. We may have time. Get me an

"We have no choice. Has a man gone? Dr. Griffiths would hurry fast. An hour may be too late. The poison

travels. Father advised it:Fifty years for one brave minute! This child should be helped to live."

"A poker in the fire. The interpreterwhether the mother will bear to have it done."

"The poison travels. It cannot be overtaken unless we start nearly equal, father said."

The earl spun round, sensible of the novelty of his being commanded, and submitting; but no sooner had he

turned than he fell into her view of the urgency, and he went, much like the boy we see at school, with a

Madge entered, and said: "Mr. Woodseer has seen baby and Martha and the donkey all safe."

"He is kind," said Carinthia. "Do we right to bathe the wound? It seems right to wash it. Little things that

seem right may be exactly wrong after all, when we are ignorant. I know burning the wound is right."

"Oh, my lady, I don't know, I can't say. Burning a child! And there's our baby."

"My Madge! I have so few of their words yet. You would hold the child to save it from a dreadful end."

"God help me, my ladyI would, as long as I live I will. . . . Oh! poor infant, we do need our courage now."

Seeing that her mistress had not a tear or a tremor, the girl blinked and schooled her quailing heart, still under

the wicked hope that the mother would not consent; in a wonderment at this lady, who was womanly, and

who could hold the red iron at living flesh, to save the poor infant from a dreadful end. Her flow of love to

this dear lady felt the slicing of a cut; was half revulsion, half worship; uttermost worship in estrangement,

The cottage door was pushed open for Lord Fleetwood and Howell Edwards, whom his master had prepared

to stand against immediate operations. A mounted messenger had been despatched. But it was true, the doctor

might not be at home. Assuming it to be a bite of rabies, minutes lost meant the terrible: Edwards bowed his

head to that. On the other hand, he foresaw the closest of personal reasons for hesitating to be in agreement

with the lady wholly. The countess was not so much a persuasive lady as she was, in her breath and gaze, a

sweeping and a wafting power. After a short argument, he had a sense of hanging like a bank detached to

fatality of motion by the crack of a landslip, and that he would speedily be on his manhood to volunteer for

He addressed the mother. Her eyes whitened from their red at his first word of laying hot iron on the child:

"Poor mother!" Carinthia sighed. "It may last a year in the child's body, and one day he shudders at water.

Father saw a bitten man die. I could fear death with the thought of that poison in me. I pray Dr. Griffiths may

The mother and some women now packed the room. A gabble arose between them and Edwards. They fired

Gower brought her news that the dog had been killed; Martha and her precious burden were outside, a mob of

men, too. He was not alarmed; but she went to the door and took her babe in her arms, and when the women

observed the lady holding her own little one, their looks were softened. At a hint of explanation from

Fleetwood's endurance broke short. The packed small room, the cagedmonkey lingo, the wailful child, and

the past and apprehended debate upon the burning of flesh, composed an intolerable torture. He said to

Edwards: "Go to the men; settle it with them. We have to follow that man Wythan; no peace otherwise. Tell

the men the body of the dog must be secured for analysis. Mad or not, it's the same. These Welsh mothers and

He turned to Carinthia: "Your ladyship will let Mr. Edwards or Mr. Woodseer conduct you to the house

where you are residing. You don't know these excitable people. I wish you to leave."

"This dogall of you have gone mad," the earl cried. "Griffiths may keep his head; it's the only chance.

Take my word, these Welshwomenjust listen to themwon't have it. You'll find yourself in a nest of

Furies. It may be right to do, it's folly to propose it, madness to attempt it. And I shall be bitten if I stop here a

minute longer; I'm gone; I can neither command nor influence. I should have thought Gower Woodseer

Fleetwood's look fell on Madge amid the group. Gower's perception of her mistress through the girl's

devotion to her moved him. He took Madge by the hand, and the sensation came that it was the next thing to

pressing his wife's. "You're a loyal girl. You have a mistress it's an honour to serve. You bind me. By the

"Oh, if he's not to get a welcome!" said the earl; and he could now fix a steadier look on his countess, who

would have animated him with either a hostile face or a tender. She had no expression of a feeling. He bent to

"I have only to say, that Esslemont is ready to receive you," he remarked, bowed more curtly, and walked

Gower followed him. They might as well have been silent, for any effect from what was uttered between

them. They spoke opinions held by each of themadverse mainly; speaking for no other purpose than to

"Oh, she has courage, no doubt; no one doubted it," Fleetwood said, out of all relation to the foregoing.

Had that been done, even to the hint of it, instead of the lordly indifference shown, Gower might have

ventured on a suggestion, that the priceless woman he could call wife was fast slipping away from him and

withering in her allegiance. He did allude to his personal sentiment. "One takes aim at Philosophy; Lady

Fleetwood pulls us up to pay tribute to our debts." But this was vague, and his hearer needed a present

"I pledged myself to that yacht," said Fleetwood, by way of reply, "or you and I would tramp it, as we did

oncejolly old days! I shall have you in mind. Now turn back. Do the best you can."

They parted midway up the street, Gower bearing away a sharp contrast of the earl and his countess; for, until

their senses are dulled, impressionable young men, however precociously philosophical, are mastered by

appearances; and they have to reflect under new lights before vision of the linked eye and mind is given

Fleetwood jumped into his carriage and ordered the coachman to drive smartly. He could not have admitted

the feeling small; he felt the having been diminished, and his requiring a rapid transportation from these parts

for him to regain his proper stature. Had he misconducted himself at the moment of danger? It is a ghastly

thought, that the craven impulse may overcome us. But no, he could reassure his repute for manliness. He had

At the same time he had done less than the woman. Needed she to have gone so far? Why precipitate herself

Now she proposes to burn the child's wound. And she will do it if they let her. One sees her at the

work,pale, flinty; no faces; trebly the terrific woman in her mild way of doing the work. All because her

old father recommended it. Because she thinks it a duty, we will say; that is juster. This young woman is a

very sword in the hand of her idea of duty. She can be feminine, too,there is one who knows. She can be

particularly distant, too. If in timidity, she has a modest view of herself or an enormous conception of the

Fleetwood asked with the simplicity of the superior being who will consequently perhaps bestow the debt he

But his was not the surface nature which can put a question of the sort and pass it. As soon as it had been

formed, a vision of the elemental creature calling him husband smote to shivers the shell we walk on, and

caught him down among the lower forces, up amid the higher; an internal and a celestial contest for the

extinction of the one or the other of them, if it was not for their union. She wrestled with him where the

darknesses roll their snakeeyed torrents over between jagged horns of the netherworld. She stood him in the

white ray of the primal vital heat, to bear unwithering beside her the test of light. They flew, they chased,

battled, embraced, disjoined, adventured apart, brought back the count of their deeds, compared them, and

name the one crushed! It was the one weighted to shame, thrust into the cellarcorner of his own disgust, by

his having asked whether that starry warrior spirit in the woman's frame would "take polish a little."

Why should it be a contention between them? For this reason: he was reduced to admire her act; and if he

admired, he could not admire without respecting; if he respected, perforce he reverenced; if he reverenced, he

worshipped. Therefore she had him at her feet. At the feet of any woman, except for the trifling object! But at

Are not things reversed when the name Carinthia sounds in the thought of him who laughed at the name not

less angelically martial than Feltre's adored silver trumpets of his papal procession; sweeter of the new

morning for the husband of the woman, if he will but consent to the worshipper's posture? Yes, and when

Gower Woodseer's "Malady of the Wealthy," as he terms the pivoting of the whole marching and wheeling

world upon the favoured of Fortune's habits and tastes, promises to quit its fell clutch on him?

Another voice in the young nobleman cried: Pooh, dolt and dupe! and surrounded her for half a league with

reek of burnt flesh and shrieks of a tortured child; giving her the aspect of a sister of the Parc�. But it was not

the ascendant voice. It growled underneath, much like the deadly beast at Carinthia's gown while she

The princeliest must have won his title to the place before he can yield other than complimentary station to a

woman without violation of his dignity; and vast wealth is not the title; worldly honours are not; deeds only

are the title. Fleetwood consented to tell himself that he had not yet performed the deeds.

Therefore, for him to be dominated was to be obscured, eclipsed. A man may outrun us; it is the fortune of

war. Eclipsed behind the skirts of a woman waving her upraised hands, with, "Back, pray!"no, that

ignominy is too horribly abominable! Be sure, the situation will certainly recur in some form; will constantly

Arrived at this point in the perpetual round of the conflict Carinthia had implanted, Fleetwood entered anew

the ranks of the ordinary men of wealth and a coronet, and he hugged himself. He enjoyed repose; knowing it

might be but a truce. Matters might go on as they were. Still, he wished her away from those Wythans,

residing at Esslemont. There she might come eventually to a better knowledge of his personal worth: "the

gold mine we carry in our bosoms till it is threshed out of us in sweat," that fellow Gower Woodseer says;

adding, that we are the richer for not exploring it. Philosophical cynicism is inconclusive. Fleetwood knew

his large capacities; he had proved them and could again. In case a certain half foreseen calamity should

happen:imagine it a fact, imagine him seized, besides admiring her character, with a taste for her person!

Why, then, he would have to impress his own mysteriously deep character on her portion of understanding.

Anticipation of the possibility of it hewed division between the young man's pride of being and his warmer

feelings. Had he been free of the dread of subjection, he would have sunk to kiss the feet of the statuesque

young woman, arms in air, firm fronted over the hideous death that tore at her skirts.

A FORMAL notification from the earl, addressed to the Countess of Fleetwood in the third person, that

Esslemont stood ready to receive her, autocratically concealed her lord's impatience to have her there; and by

the careful precision with which the stages of her journey were marked, as places where the servants

despatched to convey their lady would find preparations for her comfort, again alarmed the disordered

mother's mind on behalf of the child she deemed an object of the father's hatred, second to his hatred of the

mother. But the mother could defend herself, the child was prey. The child of a detested wife was heir to his

title and estates. His look at the child, his hasty one look down at her innocent, was conjured before her as

resembling a kick at a stone in his path. His indifference to the child's Christian names pointed darkly over its

The distempered wilfulness of a bruised young woman directed her thoughts. She spoke them in the tone of

reason to her invalid friend Rebecca Wythan, who saw with her, felt with her, yearned to retain her till breath

was gone. Owain Wythan had his doubts of the tyrant guilty of maltreating this woman of women. "But when

Carinthia was not awake to his meaning then. She sent a short letter of reply, imitating the style of her lord;

very baldly stating, that she was unable to leave Wales because of her friend's illness and her part as nurse.

Meanwhile Rebecca Wythan was passing to death. Not cheerlessly, more and more faintly, her thread of life

ran to pause, resembling a rill of the drought; and the thinner it grew, the shrewder were her murmurs for

Carinthia's ears in commending "the most real of husbands of an unreal wife" to her friendly care of him

when he would no longer see the shadow he had wedded. She had the privilege of a soul beyond our minor

rules and restrainings to speak her wishes to the true wife of a mock husbandno husband; less a husband

than this shadow of a woman a wife, she said; and spoke them without adjuring the bowed head beside her to

record a promise or seem to show the far willingness, but merely that the wishes should be heard on earth in

her last breath, for a good man's remaining one chance of happiness. On the theme touching her husband

Owain, it was verily to hear a soul speak, and have knowledge of the broader range, the rich interflowings of

the tuned discords, a spirit past the flesh can find. Her mind was at the same time alive to our worldly

conventions when other people came under its light; she sketched them and their views in her brief words

between the gasps or heaved on them, with perspicuous, humorous bluntness, as vividly as her twitched

eyebrows indicated the laugh. Gower Woodseer she read startlingly, if correctly.

Carinthia could not leave her. Attendance upon this dying woman was a drinking at the springs of life.

Rebecca Wythan under earth, the earl was briefly informed of Lady Fleetwood's consent to quit

Wales,obedient to a summons two months old,and that she would be properly escorted; for the which

her lord had made provision. Consequently the tyrant swallowed his wrath, little conceiving the monstrous

In peril of fresh floods from our Dame, who should be satisfied with the inspiring of these pages, it is owned

that her story of "the four and twenty squires of Glamorgan and Caermarthen in their brassbuttoned green

coats and buckskins, mounted and armed, an escort of the Countess of Fleetwood across the swollen Severn,

along midwinter roads, up to the Kentish gates of Esslemont," has a foundation, though the story is not the

more credible for her flourish of documentary old balladsheets, printed when London's wags had ears on

cock to any whisper of the doings of their favourite Whitechapel Countess; and indeed hardly depended on

Enthusiasm sufficient to troop forth four and twenty and more hundreds of Cambrian gentlemen, and still

more of the common folk, as far as they could journey afoot, was over the two halves of the Principality, to

give the countess a reputable and gallant bodyguard. London had intimations of kindling circumstances

concerning her, and magnified them in the interests of the national humour: which is the English way of

exalting to criticize, criticizing to depreciate, and depreciating to restore, ultimately to cherish, in reward for

These little tales of her, pricking cool blood to some activity, were furzefires among the Welsh. But where

the latter heard Bardic strings inviting a chorus, the former as unanimously obeyed the stroke of their

humorous conductor's b�ton for an outburst from the ribs or below. And it was really funny to hear of

Whitechapel's titled heroine roaming Taffyland at her old pranks. Catching a maddened bull by the horns in

the marketplace, and hanging to the infuriate beast, a wild whirl of clouts, till he is reduced to be a subject

Her performances down mines were things of the underworld. England clapped hands, merely objecting to

her not having changed her garb for the picador's or matador's, before she seized the bull. Wales adopted and

was proud of her in any costume. Welshmen North and South, united for the nonce, now propose her

gallantry as a theme to the rival Bards at the next Eisteddfod. She is to sit throned in full assembly, oak leaves

and mistletoe interwoven on her head, a white robe and green sash to clothe her, and the vanquished beast's

horns on a gilded pole behind the dais; hearing the eulogies respectively interpreted to her by Colonel

Fluellen Wythan at one ear, and Captain Agincourt Gower at the other. A splendid scene; she might well

There, however, we are at the pitch of burlesque beyond her illustrious lord's capacity to stand. Peremptory

orders from England arrive, commanding her return. She temporizes, postpones, and supplicates to have the

period extended up to the close of the Eisteddfod. My lord's orders are imperatively repeated, and very blunt.

He will not have her "continue playing the fool down there." She holds herr ground from August into

February, and then sets forth, to undergo the further process of her taming at Esslemont in England; with

Llewellyn and Vaughan and Cadwallader, and Watkyn and Shenkyn and the remains of the race of Owen

Tudor, attending her; vowed to extract a receipt from the earl her lord's responsible servitors for the safe

delivery of their heroine's person at the gates of Esslemont; ich dien their trumpeted motto.

Counting the number at four and twenty, it wears the look of an invasion. But the said number is a ballad

number, and has been since the antique time. There was, at a lesser number, enough of a challenge about it

for squires of England, never in those days backward to pick up a glove or give the ringing rejoinder for a

thumbbite, to ride out and tilt compliments with the Whitechapel Countess's green cavaliers, rally their

sprites and entertain them exactly according to their degrees of dignity, as exhibited by their 'haviour under

something of a trial; and satisfy also such temporary appetites as might be excited in them by (among other

matters left to the luck of events) a metropolitan play upon the Saxon tongue, hard of understanding to the

leeky cocks until their ready store of native pepper seasons it; which may require a corresponding English

Now the number of SaxeNormans riding out to meet and greet the Welshmen is declared to have not

exceeded nine. So much pretends to be historic, in opposition to the poetic version. They would, we may be

sure, have made it a point of honour to meet and greet their invading guests in precisely similar numbers: a

larger would have overshot the mark of courtesy; and doubtless a smaller have fallen deplorably short of it.

Therefore, an acquaintance with her chivalrous, if less impulsive, countrymen compels to the dismissing of

the Dame's ballad authorities. She has every right to quote them for her own good pleasure, and may create in

Her notion of a ballad is, that it grows like mushrooms from a scuffle of feet on grass overnight, and is a sort

of forest mother of the pied infant reared and trimmed by historians to show the world its fatherly antecedent

steps. The hand of Rose Mackrell is at least suggested in more than one of the ballads. Here the Welsh

The lady's lord is not a shining figure. How can an undecided one be a dispenser of light? Poetry could never

And leave a song to follow." Yet he was the master of her fortunes at the time; all the material power was his.

Even doggerel verse (it is worth while to brood on the fact) denies a surviving preeminence to the potent

moody, reverses the position between the driven and the driver. Poetry, however erratic, is less a servant of

the bully Present, or pompous Past, than History. The Muse of History has neither the same divination of the

intrinsic nor the devotion to it, though truly, she has possession of all the positive matter and holds us faster

Nine English cavaliers, then, left London early on a January or February morning in a Southerly direction,

bearing East; and they were the Earl of Fleetwood's intimates, of the half dependent order; so we may

suppose them to have gone at his bidding. That they met the procession of the Welsh, and claimed to take

charge of the countess's carriage, near the Kentish borderline, is an assertion supported by testimony fairly

Intelligence of the advancing party had reached the earl by courier, from the date of the first gathering on the

bridge of Pontypridd; and from Gloucester, along to the Thames at Reading; thence away to the Mole,

from Mickleham, where the Surrey chalk runs its final turfy spine Northeastward to the slope upon Kentish

Greatly to the astonishment of the Welsh cavaliers, a mounted footman, clad in the green and scarlet facings

of Lord Fleetwood's livery, rode up to them a mile outside the principal towns and named the inn where the

earl had ordered preparations for the reception of them. England's hospitality was offered on a princely scale.

The meeting, in no sense an encounter, occurred close by a thirtyacre meadow, famous over the county; and

was remarkable for the punctilious exchange of ceremonial speech, danger being present; as we see

powdermagazines protected by their walls and fosses and covered alleys. Notwithstanding which, there was

Lord Brailstone, spokesman of the welcoming party, expressed comic regrets that they had not an interpreter

Mr. Owain Wythan, in the name of the Cambrian chivalry, assured him of their comprehension and

Both gentlemen kept their heads uncovered in a suspense; they might for a word or two more of that savour

have turned into the conveniently spacious meadow. They were induced, on the contrary, to enter the channel

of English humour, by hearing Chumley Potts exclaim: "His nob!" and all of them laughed at the condensed

Laughter, let it be but genuine, is of a common nationality, indeed a common fireside; and profound

disagreement is not easy after it. The Dame professes to believe that "Carinthia Jane" had to intervene as

peacemaker, before the united races took the table in Esslemont's dininghall for a memorable night of it, and

a contest nearer the mark of veracity than that shown in another of the ballads she would have us follow.

Whatever happened, they sat down at table together, and the point of honour for them each and every was,

not to be first to rise from it. Once more the pure Briton and the mixed if not fused English engaged, Bacchus

You may imagine! says the Dame. She cites the old butler at Esslemont, "as having been much questioned on

the subject by her family relative, Dr. Glossop, and others interested to know the smallest items of the

facts,"and he is her authority for the declaration that the Welsh gentlemen and the English gentlemen,

"whatever their united number," consumed the number of nine dozen and a half of old Esslemont wine before

they rose, or as possibly sank, at the festive board at the hour of five of the morning.

Years later, this butler, Joshua Queeney, "a much enfeebled old man," retold and enlarged the tale of the

enormous consumption of his best wine; with a sacred oath to confirm it, and a tear expressive of elegiacal

"They bled me twelve dozen, not a bottle less," she quotes him, after a minute description of his countenance

and scrupulously brushed black suit, pensioner though he had become. He had grown, during the interval, to

be more communicative as to particulars. The wines were four. Sherry led off the parade pace, Hock the trot

into the merry canter, Champagne the racing gallop, Burgundy the grand trial of constitutional endurance for

the enforced finish. All these wines, except the sparkling, had their date of birth in the precedent century.

Questioned anxiously by Dr. Glossop, Queeney maintained an impartial attitude, and said there was no victor,

no vanquished. They did not sit in blocks. The tactics for preserving peace intermingled them. Each English

gentleman had a Welsh gentleman beside him; they both sat firm; both fell together. The bottles or decanters

were not stationary for the guest to fill his glass, they circulated, returning to an empty glass. All drank

equally. Often the voices were high, the talk was loud. The gentlemen were too serious to sing.

At one moment of the evening Queeney confidently anticipated a "fracassy," he said. One of the foreign

partyand they all spoke English, after five dozen bottles had gone the round, as correct as the English

themselvesremarked on the seventyyears Old Brown Sherry, that "it had a Madeira flavour." He spoke it

approvingly. Thereupon Lord Simon Pitscrew calls to Queeney, asking him "why Madeira had been supplied

instead of Esslemont's renowned Old Sherry?" A second Welsh gentleman gave his assurances that his friend

had not said it was Madeira. But Lord Brailstone accused them of the worse unkindness to a venerable Old

Brown Sherry, in attributing a Madeira flavour to it. Then another Welsh gentleman briskly and emphatically

stated his opinion, that the attribution of Madeira flavour to it was a compliment. At this, which smelt

strongly, he said, of insult, Captain Abrane called on the name of their absent host to warrant the demand of

an apology to the Old Brown Sherry, for the imputation denying it an individual distinction. Chumley Potts

offered generally to bet that he would distinguish blindfold at a single sip any Madeira from any firstclass

Sherry, Old Brown or Pale. "Single sip or smell!" Ambrose Mallard cried, either for himself or his comrade,

Of all Lord Fleetwood's following, Mr. Potts and Mr. Mallard were, the Dame informs us, Queeney's

favourites, because they were so genial; and he remembered most of what they said and did, being moved to

The Welsh gentlemen, after paying their devoirs to the countess next morning, rode on in fresh health and

spirits at midday to Barlings, the seat of Mr. Mason Fennell, a friend of Mr. Owain Wythan's. They shouted,

in an unseemly way, Queeney thought, at their breakfasttable, to hear that three of the English party,

namely, Captain Abrane, Mr. Mallard, and Mr. Potts, had rung for tea and toast in bed. Lord Simon Pitscrew,

Lord Brailstone, and the rest of the English were sore about it; for it certainly wore a look of constitutional

inferiority on the English side, which could boast of indubitably stouter muscles. The frenzied spirits of the

Welsh gentlemen, when riding off, let it be known what their opinion was. Under the protection of the

countess's presence, they were so cheery as to seem triumphantly ironical; they sent messages of condolence

With an undisguised reluctance, the countess, holding Mr. Owain Wythan's hand longer than was publicly

decent, calling him by his Christian name, consented to their departure. As they left, they defiled before her;

the vow was uttered by each, that at the instant of her summons he would mount and devote himself to her

service, individually or collectively. She waved her hand to them. They ranged in line and saluted. She kissed

her hand. Sweeping the cavaliers' obeisance, gallantest of bows, they rode away.

A striking scene, Dame Gossip says; but raises a wind over the clipped adventure, and is for recounting what

London believed about it. Enough has been conceded for the stoppage of her intrusion; she is left in the

That which London believed, or affected to believe about it, would fill chapters. There was during many

months an impression of Lord Fleetwood's countess as of a tenacious, dread, prevailing young woman, both

intrepid and astute, who had, by an exercise of various arts legitimate in open war of husband and wife,

gathered the pick of the Principality to storm and awry another of her husband's houses. The certification that

her cavaliers were Welsh gentlemen of wealth and position required a broader sneer at the Welsh than was

warranted by later and more intimate acquaintance, if it could be made to redound to her discredit. So,

therefore, added to the national liking for a plucky woman, she gained the respect for power. Whitechapel

was round her like London's one street's length extension of smoky haze, reminder of the morning's fog under

Simultaneously, strange to say, her connubial antagonist, far from being overshadowed, grew to be

proportionately respected, and on the strength of his deserts, apart from his title and his wealth. He defended

himself, as he was bound to do, by welcoming the picked Welsh squires with hospitable embrace, providing

ceremonies, receptions, and most comfortable arrangements for them, along the route. But in thus gravely

entering into the knightly burlesque of the procession, and assisting to swell the same, he not only drew the

venom from it, he stood forth as England's deputed representative, equal to her invasive, challenging guests at

all points, comic, tragic, or cordial. He saw that it had to be treated as a national affair; and he parried the

imputation which would have injured his country's name for courtly breeding, had they been illreceived,

He was well inspired. It was popularly felt to be the supreme of clevernay, noblefencing. Really noble,

though the cleverness was conspicuous. A defensive stroke, protecting him against his fair one's violent

charge of horse, warded off an implied attack upon Old England, in Old England's best humoured, easy

Supposing the earl to have acted otherwise, his countess would virtually have ridden over him, and wild

Wales have cast a shadow on the chivalry of magisterial England. He and his country stood to meet the issue

together the moment the Countess of Fleetwood and her escort crossed the Welsh border; when it became a

question between the hothearted, at their impetuous gallop, and the sedatively minded, in an unfortified

camp of armchairs. The earl's adroitness, averting a collision fatal or discomforting to both, disengaged him

from an incumbent odium, of which, it need hardly be stated, neither the lady nor her attendant cavaliers had

any notion at the hour of the assembly for the start for England on the bridge of Ponty pridd. The hungry

mother had the safety of her babe in thought. The hotheaded Welshmen were sworn to guard their heroine.

That is the case presented by the Dame's papers, when the incredible is excised. She claims the being a good

friend to fiction in feeding popular voracity with all her stores. But the Old Buccaneer, no professed friend to

it, is a sounder guide in the maxim, where he says: Deliver yourself by permit of your cheque on the Bank of

The Dame does not like the shaking for a sifting. Romance, however, is not a mountain made of gold, but a

vein running some way through; and it must be engineered, else either we are filled with wind from

swallowing indigestible substance, or we consent to a debasing of the currency, which means her to

morrow's bankruptcy; and the spectacle of Romance in the bankruptcy court degrades us (who believe we are

allied to her) as cruelly as it appals. It gives the cynic licence to bark day and night for an entire generation.

Surely the Countess of Fleetwood's drive from the Welsh borders to Esslemont, accompanied by the chosen

of the land, followed by the vivats of the whole Principality, and England gaping to hear the stages of her

progress, may be held sufficiently romantic without stuffing of surprises and conflicts, adventures at inns,

alarms at midnight, windings of a horn over hilly verges of black heaths, and the rape of the child, the pursuit,

the recovery of the child, after a new set of heroine performances on the part of a strungwire mother, whose

outcry in a waste country district, as she clasps her boy to her bosom again: "There's a farm I see for milk for

him!" the Dame repeats, having begun with an admission that the tale has been contradicted, and is not

produced on authority. The end in design is to win the ear by making a fuss, and roll event upon event for the

braining of common intelligence, until her narrative resembles dusty troopings along a road to the races.

Carinthia and her babe reached Esslemont, no matter what impediments. There, like a stopped runner whose

pantings lengthen to the longer breath, her alarms over the infant subsided, ceasing for as long as she clasped

it or was in the room with it. Walking behind the precious donkeybasket round the park, she went armed,

and she soon won a fearful name at Kentish cottagehearths, though she was not black to see, nor old. No,

she was very young. But she did all the things that soldiers do,was a bit of a foreigner;she brought a

reputation up from the Welsh land, and it had a raven's croak and a glowworm's drapery and a goblin's

Something was hinted of her having agitated London once. Somebody dropped word of her and that old Lord

Levellier up at Croridge. She stalked park and country at night. Stories, one or two near the truth, were told of

a restless and a very decided lady down these parts as well; and the earl her husband daren't come nigh in his

dread of her, so that he runs as if to save his life out of every place she enters. And he's not one to run for a

All the same, he shakes in his shoes before her, durst hardly spy at Esslemont again while she's in occupation.

His managing gentleman comes down from him, and goes up from her; that's how they communicate. One

week she's quite solitary; another week the house is brimful as can be. She's the great lady entertaining then.

Yet they say it's a fact, she has not a shilling of her own to fling at a beggar. She'll stock a cottage wanting it

with provision for a fortnight or more, and she'll order the doctor in, and she'll call and see the right things

done for illness. But no money; no one's to expect money of her. The shots you hear in Esslemont grounds

out of season are she and her maid, always alongside her, at it before a target on a bank, trying that old Lord

Levellier's gunpowder out of his mill; and he's got no money either; not for his workmen, they say, until they

congregate, and a threatening to blow him up brings forth half their pay, on account. But he's a known miser.

She's not that. She's a pleasantfaced lady for the poor. She has the voice poor people like. It's only her

enemy, maybe her husband, she can be terrible to. She'd drive a hole through a robber stopping her on the

This was Esslemont's atmosphere working its way to the earl, not so very long after the establishment of his

countess there. She could lay hold of the English, too, it seemed. Did she call any gentleman of the district by

his Christian name? Lord Simon Pitscrew reported her doing so in the case of one of the Welshmen. Those

BEHIND his white plaster of composure, Lord Fleetwood had alternately raged and wondered during the

passage of the Welsh cavalcade up Eastward:a gigantic burlesque, that would have swept any husband of

their heroine off the scene had he failed to encounter it deferentially, preserving his countenance and

ostensibly his temper. An idiot of a woman, incurable in her lunacy, suspects the father of the infant as guilty

of designs done to death in romances; and so she manages to set going solemnly a bigger blazing Tom Fool's

show than any known or written romance gives word of! And that fellow, Gower Woodseer, pleads, in

apology, for her husband's confusion, physiologically, that it comes of her having been carried off and kept a

prisoner when she was bearing the child and knitting her whole mind to ensure the child. But what sheer

animals these women are, if they take impressions in such a manner! And Mr. Philosopher argues that the

abusing of woman proves the hating of Nature; names it "the commonest insanity, and the deadliest," and

men are "planted in the bog of their unclean animal condition until they do proper homage to the animal

Nature makes the woman be." Oh, pish, sir!as Meeson Corby has the habit of exclaiming when Abrane's

"fiddler" argues him into a corner. The fellow can fiddle fine things and occasionally clear sense:"Men

hating Nature are insane. Women and Nature are close. If it is rather general to hate Nature and maltreat

women, we begin to see why the world is a mad world." That is the tune of the fiddler's fiddling. As for him,

something protects him. He was the slave of Countess Livia; like Abrane, Mallard, Corby, St. Ombre, young

Cressett, and the dozens. He is now her master. Can a man like that be foolish, in saying of the Countess

Carinthia, she is "not only quick to understand, she is in the quick of understanding"? Gower Woodseer said

it of her in Wales, and again on the day of his walk up to London from Esslemont, after pedestrian exercise,

which may heat the frame, but cools the mind. She stamped that idea on a thoughtful fellow.

He's a Welshman. They are all excitable,have heads on hound's legs for a flying figure in front. Still, they

must have an object, definitely seen by themdefinite to them if dim to their neighbours; and it will run in

the poetic direction: and the woman to win them, win all classes of them, within so short a term, is a toss

above extraordinary. She is named Carinthia: suitable name for the Welsh pantomimic procession. Or cry out

She is a daughter of the mountains,should never have left them. She is also a daughter of the Old

Buccaneerno poor specimen of the fighting Englishman of his day. According to Rose Mackrell, he, this

Old Buccaneer, it was, who, by strange adventures, brought the great Welsh mines into the family! He would

not be ashamed in spying through his nautical glass, up or down, at his daughter's doings. She has not yet

developed a taste for the mother's tricks:the mother, said to have been a kindler. That Countess of Cressett

was a romantic little fly away bird. Both parents were brave: the daughter would inherit gallantry. She

inherits a kind of thwarted beauty. Or it needs the situation seen in Wales: her arms up and her unaffrighted

eyes over the unappeasable growl. She had then the beauty coming from the fathom depths, with the torch of

Life in the jaws of Death to light her: beauty of the nether kingdom mounting to an upper place in the higher.

Her beauty recognized, the name of the man who married her is not Longearsnot to himself, is the main

Suppose he went to her, would she be trying at domination? The woman's pitch above woman's beauty was

perceived to be no intermittent beam, but so living as to take the stamp of permanence. More than to say it

was hers, it was she. What a deadly peril brought into view was her charactersoul, some call it: generally a

thing rather distasteful in women, or chilling to the masculine temperament. Here it attracts. Here, strange to

say, it is the decided attraction, in a woman of a splendid figure and a known softness. By rights, she should

have more understanding than to suspect the husband as guilty of designs done to death in romances.

However, she is not a craven who compliments him by fearing him, and he might prove that there is no need

for fear. But she would be expecting explanations before the reconcilement. The bosom of these women will

keep on at its quick heaving until they have heard certain formal words, oaths to boot. How speak them?

His old road of the ladder appeared to Fleetwood an excellent one for obviating explanations and effecting

the reconcilement without any temporary seeming forfeit of the native male superiority. For there she is at

Esslemont now; any night the window could be scaled. "It is my husband." The soul was in her voice when

He remembered that it had not ennobled her to him then; had not endeared; was taken for a foreign example

of the childish artless, imperfectly suited to our English clime. The tone of adorable utterances, however

much desired, is never for repetition; nor is the cast of divine sweet looks; nor are the particular deedsonce

pardonable, fitly pleaded. A second scaling of her windowno, night's black hills girdle the scene with

hoarse echoes; the moon rushes out of her clouds grimacing. Even Fleetwood's devil, much addicted to cape

For she had, by singular transformation since, and in spite of a deluging grotesque that was antecedently

incredible, she had become a personage, counting her adherents; she could put half the world in motion on

her side. Yell those Welshmen to scorn, they were on a plane finding native ground with as large a body of

these English. His baser mind bowed to the fact. Her aspect was entirely different; her attitude toward him as

well: insomuch that he had to chain her to her original features by the conjuring of recollected phrases

memorable for the vivid portraiture of her foregone simplicity and her devotion to "my husband."

Yes, there she was at Esslemont, securely there, near him, to be seen any day; worth claiming, too; a

combatant figure, provocative of the fight and the capture rather than repellent. The respect enforced by her

attitude awakened in him his inherited keen old relish for our intersexual strife and the indubitable victory of

the stronger, with the prospect of slavish charms, fawning submission, marrowy spoil. Or perhaps, preferably,

a sullen submission, reluctant charms; far more marrowy. Or who can say?the creature is a rocket of the

shot into the fiery garland of stars; she may personate any new marvel, be an unimagined terror, an

overwhelming bewitchment: for she carries the unexpected in her bosom. And does it look like such

indubitable victory, when the man, the woman's husband, divided from her, toothsome to the sex,

acknowledges within himself and lets the world know his utter dislike of other women's charms, to the degree

that herbal anchorites positively could not be colder, could not be chaster:and he no forest bird, but having

the garden of the variety of fairest flowers at nod and blush about him! That was the truth. Even Henrietta's

beauty had the effect of a princess's birthday doll admired on show by a contemptuous boy.

Wherefore, then, did the devil in him seek to pervert this loveliest of young women and feed on her

humiliation for one flashing minute? The taste had gone, the desire of the vengeance was extinct, personal

gratification could not exist. He spied into himself, and set it down to one among the many mysteries.

Men uninstructed in analysis of motives arrive at this dangerous conclusion, which spares their pride and

caresses their indolence, while it flatters the sense of internal vastness, and invites to headlong intoxication. It

allows them to think they are of such a compound, and must necessarily act in that manner. They are not

taught at the schools or by the books of the honoured places in the libraries, to examine and see the simplicity

of these mysteries, which it would be here and there a saving grace for them to see; as the minstrel, dutifully

inclining to the prosy in their behalf and morality's, should exhibit; he should arrest all the characters of his

drama to spring it to vision and strike perchance the chord primarily if not continually moving them, that

readers might learn the why and how of a germ of evil, its flourishing under rebuke, the persistency of it after

the fell creative energy has expired and pleasure sunk to be a phlegmatic dislike, almost a loathing.

This would here be done, but for signs of a barometric dead fall in Dame Gossip's chaps, already heavily

pendent. She would be off with us on one of her whirling cyclones or elemental mad waltzes, if a step were

taken to the lecturingdesk. We are so far in her hands that we have to keep her quiet. She will not hear of the

reasons and the change of reasons for one thing and the other. Things were so: narrate them, and let readers

do their reflections for themselves, she says, denouncing our conscientious method as the direct road

downward to the dreadful modern appeal to the senses and assault on them for testimony to the veracity of

everything described; to the extent that, at the mention of a vile smell, it shall be blown into the reader's

nostrils, and corkingpins attack the comfortable seat of him simultaneously with a development of surprises.

It is not perfectly visible. And she would gain in formation of the singular nature of the young of the male sex

in listening to the wrangle between Lord Fleetwood and Gower Woodseer on the subject of pocketmoney

for the needs of the Countess Carinthia. For it was a long and an angry one, and it brought out both of them,

exposing, of course, the more complex creature the most. They were near a rupture, so scathing was Gower's

tone of irate professor to shirky scholar or it might be put, German professor to English scuffleshoe.

She is for the scene of "Chillon John's" attempt to restore the respiration of his bankbook by wager; to wit,

that he would walk a mile, run a mile, ride a mile, and jump ten hurdles, then score five rifleshots at a three

hundred yards' distant target within a count of minutes; twentyfive, she says; and vows it to have been one

of the most exciting of scenes ever witnessed on green turf in the land of wagers; and that he was

accomplishing it quite certainly when, at the first of the hurdles, a treacherous unfolding and waving of a

white flag caused his horse to swerve and the loss of one minute, seven and twenty seconds, before he cleared

the hurdles; after which, he had to fire his shots hurriedly, and the last counted blank, for being outside the

So he was beaten. But a terrific uproar over the field proclaimed the popular dissatisfaction. Presently there

was a cleavage of the mob, and behold a chase at the heels of a fellow to rival the very captain himself for

fleetness. He escaped, leaving his pole with the sheet nailed to it, by way of flag, in proof of foul play; or a

proof, as the other side declared, of an innocently premature signalizing of the captain's victory. However that

might be, he ran. Seeing him spin his legs at a hound's pace, half a mile away, four countrymen attempted to

stop him. All four were laid on their backs in turn with stupefying celerity; and on rising to their feet, and for

the remainder of their natural lives, they swore that no man but a Champion could have floored them so. This

again may have been due to the sturdy island pride of four good men knocked over by one. We are unable to

decide. Wickedness there was, the Dame says; and she counsels the world to "put and put together," for, at

any rate, "a partial elucidation of a most mysterious incident." As to the wagermoney, the umpires

dissented; a famous quarrel, that does not concern us here, sprang out of the dispute; which was eventually,

after great disturbance of the country, referred to three leading sportsmen in the metropolitan sphere, who

pronounced the wager "off," being two to one. Hence arose the dissatisfied third party, and the letters of this

minority to the newspapers, exciting, if not actually dividing, all England for several months.

Now the month of December was the month of the Dame's mysterious incident. From the date of January, as

Madge Winch knew, Christopher Ines had ceased to be in the service of the Earl of Fleetwood. At Esslemont

Park gates, one winter afternoon of a Northeast wind blowing "rumshrub into men for stand against

rheumatics," as he remarked, Ines met the girl by appointment, and informing her that he had money, and that

Lord Fleetwood was "a black nobleman," he proposed immediate marriage. The hymeneal invitation, wafted

to her on the breath of rumshrub, obtained no response from Madge until she had received evasive answers

Lord Fleetwood, he repeated, was a black nobleman. She brought him to say of his knowledge, that Lord

Fleetwood hated, and had reason to hate, Captain Levellier. "Shouldn't I hate the man took my sweetheart

from me and popped me into the noose with his sister instead?" Madge was now advised to be overcome by

the smell of rumshrub:a mere fancy drink tossed off by heroes in their idle moments, before they settle

down to the serious business of real drinking, Kit protested. He simulated envious admiration of known

heroes, who meant business, and scorned any of the weak stuff under brandy, and went at it till the bottles

were the first to give in. For why? They had to stomach an injury from the world or their young woman, and

halfway on they shoved that young person and all enemies aside, trampled 'em. That was what Old O'Devy

signified; and many's the man driven to his consolation by a cat of a girl, who's like the elements in their

puffs and spits at a gallant ship, that rides the tighter and the tighter for all they can do to capsize. "Tighter

They fell upon the smack of words. Kit hitched and huffed away, threatening bottles. Whatever he had done,

it was to establish the petticoated hornet in the dignity of matron of a champion lightweight's wholesome

retreat of a publichouse. A spell of his larkish hilarity was for the punishment of the girl devoted to his

heroical performances, as he still considered her to be, though women are notoriously volatile, and her

Madge had little sorrow for him. She was the girl of the fiery heart, not the large heart; she could never be

devoted to more than one at a time, and her mistress had all her heart. In relation to Kit, the thought of her

having sacrificed her good name to him, flung her on her pride of chastity, without the reckoning of it as a

merit. It was the inward assurance of her independence: the young spinster's planting of the standard of her

proud secret knowledge of what she is, let it be a thing of worth or what you will, or the world think as it

Her feeling, the much livelier animation, was bitter grief, because her mistress, unlike herself, had been

betrayed by her ignorance of the man into calling him husband. Just some knowledge of the man! The

warning to the rescue might be there. For nothing did the dear lady weep except for her brother's evil fortune.

The day when she had intelligence from Mrs. Levellier of her brother's defeat, she wept over the letter on her

knees long hours. "Me, my child, my brother!" she cried more than once. She had her suspicion of the earl

then, and instantly, as her loving servant had. The suspicion was now no dark light, but a clear daybeam to

Madge. She adopted Kit's word of Lord Fleetwood. "A black nobleman he is! he is!" Her mistress had written

like a creature begging him for money. He did not deign a reply. To her! When he had seen good proof she

was the bravest woman on earth; and she rushed at death to save a child, a common child, as people say. And

who knows but she saved that husband of hers, too, from bites might have sent him out of the world barking,

They were in the month of March. Her dear mistress had been begging my lord through Mr. Woodseer

constantly of late for an allowance of money; on her knees to him, as it seemed; and Mr. Woodseer was

expected at Esslemont. Her mistress was looking for him eagerly. Something her heart was in depended on it,

and only her brother could be the object, for now she loved only him of these men; though a gentleman

coming over from Barlings pretty often would pour mines of money into her lap for half a word.

Carinthia had walked up to Croridge in the morning to meet her brother at Lekkatts. Madge was left guardian

of the child. She liked a stroll any day round Esslemont Park, where her mistress was beginning to strike

roots; as she soon did wherever she was planted, despite a tone of pity for artificial waters and gardeners' arts.

Madge respected them. She knew nothing of the grandeur of wildness. Her native English veneration for the

smoothing hand of wealth led her to think Esslemont the home of all homes for a lady with her husband

beside her. And without him, too, if he were wafted over seas and away: if there would but come a wind to do

The wild Northeaster tore the budded beeches. Master John Edward Russett lay in the cradlingbasket drawn

by his docile donkey, Martha and Madge to right and left of him, a speechless rustic, graduating in footman's

At slow march round by the wrinkled water, Madge saw the park gates flung wide. A coach drove up the road

along on the farther rim of the circle, direct for the house. It stopped, the team turned leisurely and came at a

He alighted, bidding one of his grooms drive to stables. Madge performed her reverence, aware that she did it

in clumsy style; his presence had startled her instincts and set them travelling.

"My lady teaches him to breathe with his mouth shut, like her father taught her when she was little. Our baby

Probably good management on the part of the mother. But the wife's absence disappointed the husband strung

to meet her, and an obtrusion of her practical motherhood blurred the prospect demanded by his present step.

"You've punished him, if he's to lose a bonny sweetheart, poor devil! Your sister Sally sends you messages?"

"You remember the child bitten by a dog down in Wales. I have word from my manager there. Poor little

Madge's bosom went shivering up and sank. "My lady was right. She's not often wrong."

"She's looking well?" said the earl, impatient with her moral merits:and this communication from Wales

had been the decisive motive agent in hurrying him at last to Esslemont. The next moment he heard coolly of

the lady's looking well. He wanted fervid eulogy of his wife's looks, if he was to hear any.

THE girl was counselled by the tremor of her instincts to forbear to speak of the minor circumstance, that her

mistress had, besides a good stick, a good companion on the road to Croridge: and she rejoiced to think her

mistress had him, because it seemed an intimation of justice returning upon earth. She was combative, a born

rebel against tyranny. She weighed the powers, she felt to the worth, of the persons coming into her range of

touch: she set her mistress and my lord fronting for a wrestle, and my lord's wealth went to thin vapour, and

her mistress's character threw him. More dimly, my lord and the Welsh gentleman were put to the trial: a

tough one for these two men. She did not proclaim the winner, but a momentary flutter of pity in the direction

of Lord Fleetwood did as much. She pitied him; for his presence at Esslemont betrayed an inclination; he was

ignorant of his lady's character, of how firm she could be to defy him and all the world, in her gratitude to the

gentleman she thought of as her true friend, smiled at for his open nature, called by his Christian name.

The idea of a piece of information stinging Lord Fleetwood, the desire to sting, so to be an instrument of

retribution (one of female human nature's ecstasies); and her abstaining, that she might not pain the lord who

had been generous to her sister Sally, made the force in Madge's breast which urges to the gambling for the

Lord Fleetwood chatted; Madge had him wincing. He might pull the cover of the child's face carelesslyhe

looked at the child. His look at the child was a thought of the mother. If he thought of the mother, he would

be wanting to see her. If he heard her call a gentleman by his Christian name, and heard the gentleman say

"Carinthia," my lord would begin to shiver at changes. Women have to do unusual things when they would

bring that outer set to human behaviour. Perhaps my lord would mount the coachbox and whip his horses

away, adieu forever. His lady would not weep. He might, perhaps, command her to keep her mouth shut from

gentlemen's Christian names, all except his own. His lady would not obey. He had to learn something of

changes that had come to others as well as to himself. Ah, and then would he dare hint, as base men will? He

may blow foul smoke on her, she will shine out of it. He has to learn what she is, that is his lesson; and let

him pray all night and work hard all day for it not to be too late. Let him try to be a little like Mr. Woodseer,

who worships the countess, and is hearty with the gentleman she treats as her best of friends. There is the real

Fleetwood chatted on airily. His instincts were duller than those of the blackbrowed girl, at whom he gazed

for idle satisfaction of eye from time to time while she replied demurely and maintained her drama of the

featureless but well distinguished actors within her bosom,a round, plump bust, good wharfage and

harbourage, he was thinking. Excellent harbourage, supposing the arms out in pure goodwill. A girl to hold

her voyager fast and safe! Men of her class had really a capital choice in a girl like this. Men of another class

as well, possibly, for temporary anchorage out midchannel. No? possibly not. Here and there a girl is a

Tartar. Ines talked of her as if she were a kind of religious edifice and a doubt were sacrilege. She could

impress the rascal: girls have their arts for reaching the holy end, and still they may have a welcome for a

The earl said humorously: "You will grant me permission to lunch at your mistress's table in her absence?"

And she said: "My lord!" And he resumed, to waken her interest with a personal question: "You like our quiet

country round Esslemont?" She said: "I do," and gave him plain look for look. Her eye was undefended: he

went into it, finding neither shallow nor depth, simply the look, always the look; whereby he knew that no

story of man was there, and not the shyest of remote responsive invitations from Nature's wakened and

detected rogue. The bed of an unmarried young woman's eye yields her secret of past and present to the

intrepid diver, if he can get his plunge; he holds her for the tenth of a minute, that is the revealment. Jewel or

oystershell, it is ours. She cannot withhold it, he knew right well. This girl, then, was, he could believe, one

Invitation or challenge or response from the handsomest he would have scorned just then. His native devilry

suffered a stir at sight of an innocent in knowledge and spotless after experiences. By a sudden singular twist,

rather unfairly, naturally, as it happened, he attributed it to an influence issuing from her mistress, to whom

the girl was devoted, whom consequently she copied; might physically, and also morally, at a distance,

"Well, you've been a faithful servant to your lady, my dear; I hope you'll be comfortable here," he said. "She

"My lady would be quite contented if she could pass two months of the year in the mountains," Madge

"Look at me. They say people living together get a likeness to one another. What's your opinion? Upon my

word, your eyebrows remind me, though they're not the colourthey have a bend . . ."

"Yes; well, there's no one to resemble her there, she has her markkind of superhuman business. We're none

of us `fifty feet high, with phosphorous heads,' as your friend Mr. Gower Woodseer says of the prodigiosities.

At Lekkatts beneath Croridge a lean midday meal was being finished hard on the commencement by a silent

company of three. When eating is choking to the younger members of the repast, bread and cold

muttonbone serve the turn as conclusively as the Frenchman's buffetdishes. Carinthia's face of unshed tears

dashed what small appetite Chillon had. Lord Levellier plied his fork in his right hand ruminating, his back

Riddles to the thwarted young, these old people will not consent to be read by sensations. Carinthia watched

his jaws at their work of eating under his victim's eyeknowing Chillon to be no longer an officer in the

English service; knowing that her beloved had sold out for the mere money to pay debts and support his

Henrietta; knowing, as he must know, that Chillon's act struck a knife to pierce his mother's breast through

her coffinboards! This old man could eat, and he could withhold the means due to his dead sister's son.

Could he look on Chillon and not feel that the mother's heart was beating in her son's fortunes? Half the

Lord Levellier laid his fork on the plate. He munched his grievance with his bit of meat. The nephew and

niece here present feeding on him were not so considerate as the Welsh gentleman, a total stranger, who had

walked up to Lekkatts with the Countess of Fleetwood, and expressed the preference to feed at an inn.

His fork on his plate released the couple. Barely half a dozen words, before the sitting to that niggard

restoration, had informed Carinthia of the step taken by her brother. She beckoned him to follow her.

"The worst is done now, Chillon. I am silent. Uncle is a rock. You say we must not offend. I have given him

"Her headquarters will be here, at a furnished house. She's with her cousin, the Dowager."

Their thoughts beneath their speech were like fish darting under shadow of the traffic bridge.

"She loves music," said Carinthia; "it is almost life to her, like fresh air to me. Next month I am in London;

Lady Arpington is kind. She will give me as much of their polish as I can take. I dare say I should feel the

"For instance, did I hear `Owain,' when your Welsh friend was leaving?" Chillon asked.

"`Womanizes,' he says, Carin. You quote him falsely, to shield the sex. Quite right. But my sister must not be

tricky. Keep to the rules. You're an exceptional woman, and it would be a good argument, if you were not in

"I have a brother, I have a friend, I have noI am a man's wife and the mother of his child; I am free, or

husband would mean dungeon. Does my brother want an oath from me? That I can give him."

"Conduct, yes; I couldn't doubt you," said Chillon. "But `the world's a flood at a dyke for women, and they

"But Owain is not our enemy," said Carinthia, in her deeper tones, expressive of conviction and not thereby

assuring to hear. "He is a man with men, a child with women. His Rebecca could describe him; I laugh now

at some of her sayings of him; I see her mouth, so tenderly comical over her big `simpleton,' she called him,

The gentleman appeared on the waste land above the house. His very loose black suit and a peculiar roll of

his gait likened him to a mourning boatswain who was jolly. In Lord Levellier's workshop his remarks were

to the point. Chillon's powders for guns and blasting interested him, and he proposed to ride over from

His conversation was practical and shrewd on the walk with Chillon and Carinthia down to Esslemont:

evidently he was a man well armed to encounter the world; social usages might be taught him. Chillon gained

a round view of the worthy simple fellow, unlikely to turn out impracticable, for he talked such good sense

Carinthia saw her brother tickled and interested. A feather moved her. Full of tears though she was, her heart

lay open to the heavens and their kind, small, wholesome gifts. Her happiness in the walk with her brother

and her friendthe pair of them united by her companionship, both of them showing they counted her their

comradewas the nearest to the radiant day before she landed on an island, and imagined happiness grew

here, and found it to be gilt thorns, loud mockery. A shaving Northeaster tore the scream from hedges and the

roar from copses under a faceless breadth of sky, and she said, as they turned into Esslemont Park lane: "We

"You used to walk together long walks over in your own country," said Mr. Wythan.

"Never knew you confess to it," said Chillon, as he swallowed the name on her lips.

"Wales reminded. Yes, Owain, I shall not forget Wales, Welsh people. Mr. Woodseer says they have the

threestringed harp in their breasts, and one string is always humming, whether you pull it or no."

There was a quiet interrogation in Chillon's turn of the head at this fervent simpleton.

THE earl's easy grace of manner was a ceremonial mantle on him as he grasped the situation in a look. He

bent with deferential familiarity to his countess, exactly toning the degree of difference which befitted a

"There and back?" he said, and conveyed a compliment to Carinthia's pedestrian vigour in the wary smile

She compelled him to take her in the plural, though he addressed her separately, but her tones had their

She waved hand for Madge to conduct donkey and baby to the house. He noticed. He was unruffled.

The form of amenity expected from her, in relation to her brother, was not exhibited. She might perhaps be

"I beg," he said, and motioned to Chillon the way of welcome into the park, saw the fixed figure, and passed

over the unspoken refusal, with a remark to Mr. Wythan: "At Barlings, I presume?"

Chillon folded his arms round her. "God bless you, dear love. Let me see you soon." He murmured: "You can

She kissed her brother's cheek. The strain of her spread fingers on his shoulder signified no dread at her being

Strangers observing their embrace would have vowed that the pair were brother and sister, and of a notable

"I will walk with you to Croridge again when you send word you are willing to go; and so, goodbye,

She gave her hand; frankly she pressed the Welshman's, he not a whit behind her in frankness.

Fleetwood had a skimming sense of a drop upon a funny, whirly world. He kept from giddiness, though the

whirl had lasted since he beheld the form of a wild forest girl, dancing, as it struck him now, over an abyss,

Ay, and she danced at the ducal schloss;she mounted his coach like a witch of the Alps up crags;she

was beside him pelting to the vale under a leaden Southwester;she sat solitary by the fireside in the room

Veil it. He consented to the veil he could not lift. He had not even power to try, and his heart thumped.

He had accused her as the creature destroying Romance. Was it gold in place of gilding, absolute upper

human life that the ridiculous object at his heels over London proposed instead of delirious brilliancies,

There was Madge and the donkey baskettrap ahead on the road to the house, bearing proof of the veiled

hadbeen: signification of a mighthavebeen. Why not a possible might be? Still the mightbe might be.

Looking on this shaven earth and sky of March with the wrathful wind at work, we know that it is not the

end: a day follows for the world. But looking on those blown black funeral sprays, and the wrinkled chill

waters, and the stare of the Esslemont housewindows, it has an appearance of the last lines of our written

volume: dead Finis. Not death; fouler, the man alive seeing himself stretched helpless for the altering of his

deeds; a coffin carrying him; the fatal whiteheaded sacerdotal official intoning his aims on the march to

front, the drear craped files of the liveried, salaried mourners over his failure trooping at his heels.

But the man alive, if but an inch alive, can so take his life in his clutch, that he does alter, cleanse, recast his

Can he lay his clutch on another's life, and wring out the tears shed, the stains of the bruises, recollection of

Contemplate the wounded creature as a woman. Then, what sort of woman is she? She was once under a

fascination ludicrously, painfully, intensely like a sort of tipsy poor puss, the trapped hare tossed to her

serpent; and thoroughly reassured for a few caresses, quite at home, caged and at home; and all abloom with

It is the doom of the innocents, a natural fate. Smother the creature with kindness again, show we are a point

in the scale above that old coiler snakewhich broke no bones, bit not so very deep;she will be, she ought

to be, the woman she was. That is, if she was then sincere, a dose of kindness should operate happily to

restore the honeymoony fancies, hopes, trusts, dreams, all back, as before the honeymoon showed the silver

crook and shadowy hag's back of a decaying crescent. And true enough, the poor girl's young crescent of a

honeymoon went down sicklyyellow rather early. It can be renewed. She really was at that time rather

romantic. She became absurd. Romance is in her, nevertheless. She is a woman of mettle: she is probably

expecting to be wooed. One makes a hash of yesterday's left dish, but she may know no better. "Add a

pickle," as Chummy Potts used to say. The dish is rendered savoury by a slight expenditure of attentions, just

"Pleasant to see you established here, if you find the place agreeable," he said.

She was kissing her hand to her brother, all her eyes for him or for the couple; and they were hidden by the

"Praises the mother's management of the young one. John Edward: Edward for callname. Madge boasts his

"And babes repay us! We learn from small things. Out of the mouth of babes wisdom? Well, their habits

show the wisdom of the mother. A good mother! There's no higher title. A lady of my acquaintance bids fair

Carinthia looked in simplicity, saw herself, and said: "If a mother may rear her boy till he must go to school,

"Ah," said he, nodding over her mania of the perpetual suspicion. "Leddings, Queeney, the servants here, run

"You see, we English are not such bad fellows when we're known. The climate today, for example, is rather

"I miss colours most in England," said Carinthia. "I like the winds. Now and then we have a day to

"We're to be `the artist of the day,' Gower Woodseer says, and we get an attachment to the dreariest; we are to

study `small variations of the commonplace'dear me! But he may be right. The `sky of lead and scraped

lead' over those limes, he points out; and it's not a bad trick for reconciling us to gloomy English weather.

Fleetwood depicted his plodding Gower at the tussle with accountbooks. She was earnest in sympathy; not

awake to the comical; dull as the clouds, dull as the discourse. Yet he throbbed for being near her: took

He was shut from her eyes. The clear brown eyes gave exchange of looks; less of admission than her honest

Madge and the miracle infant awaited them on the terrace. For so foreign did the mother make herself to him,

that the appearance of the child, their own child, here between them, was next to miraculous; and the mother,

who might well have been the most astonished, had transparently not an idea beyond the verified palpable

lump of young life she lifted in her arms out of the arms of Madge, maternally at home with its presence on

Demonstrably a fine specimen, a promising youngster. The father was allowed to inspect him. This was his

heir: a little fellow of smiles, features, puckered brows of inquiry; seeming a thing made already, and active

She was constrained to give answer. "There is a likeness to my father, I have thought."

There's a dotage of idolatrous daughters, he could have retorted; and his gaze was a polite offer to humdrum

"I am ready to go in a few hours, for a small income of money, for my child and me."

"Three thousand a year for pinmoney, or more, are at your disposal. Stay here, I beg. You have only to

notify your wants. And we'll talk familiarly now, as we're together. Can I be of aid to your brother? Tell me,

pray. I am disposed in every way to subscribe to your wishes. Pray, speak, speak out."

So the earl said. He had to force his familiar tone against the rebuke of her grandeur of stature; and he was for

inducing her to deliver her mind, that the mountain girl's feebleness in speech might reinstate him.

She rejoined unhesitatingly: "My brother would not accept aid from you, my lord. I will take no money more

"I would keep from using those words. I have no right to refuse the entry of the house to you."

"I will leave them when I have a little money, or when I know of how I may earn some."

"No, you can't put it aside while the man with the title lives, not even if you're running off in earnest, under a

dozen Welsh names. Why should you desire to do it? The title entitles you to the command of half my

possessions. As to the house, don't be alarmed; you will not have to guard your rooms. The extraordinary

wild animal youthe impression may have been produced; I see, I see. If I were in the house, I should not be

raging at your doors; and it is not my intention to enter the house. That is, not by right of ownership. You

She had the art of extracting his word from him. The word given, she went off with it, disengaged mistress of

Esslemont. And she might have the place for residence, but a decent courtesy required that she should remain

at the portico until he was out of sight. She was the first out of sight, rather insolently.

She returned him without comment the spell he had cast on her, and he was left to estimate the value of a

dinted piece of metal not in the currency, stamped false coin. An odd sense of impoverishment chilled him.

Chilly weather was afflicting the whole country, he was reminded, and he paced about hurriedly until his

horses were in the shafts. After all, his driving away would be much more expected of him than a stay at the

house where the Whitechapel Countess resided, chill, dry, talking the language of early Exercises in English,

As he whipped along the drive and left that glassy stare of Esslemont behind him, there came a slap of a

reflection: here, on the box of this coach, the bride just bursting her sheath sat, and was like warm wax to

take impressions. She was like hard stone to retain them, pretty evidently. Like women the world over, she

thinks only of her side of the case. Men disdain to plead theirs. Now money is offered her, she declines it.

Turn the mind to something brighter. Fleetwood strung himself to do so, and became agitated by the question

whether the bride sat to left or to right of him when the Southwester blewa wind altogether preferable to

the chill Northeast. Women, when they are no louder warm, are colder than the deadliest catarrh wind

scything across these islands. Of course she sat to left of him. In the line of the main road, he remembered a

She never had a wooing: she wanted it, had a kind of right to it, or the show of it. How to begin? But was she

worth an effort? Turn to something brighter. Religion is the one refuge from women, Feltre says:his

Roman Catholic recipe. The old shoemaker, Mr. Woodseer, hauls women into his religion, and purifies them

by the process,fancies he does. He gets them to wear an air. Old Gower, too, has his Religion of Nature,

with free admission for women, whom he worships in similes, running away from them, leering sheepishly.

No, Feltre's rigid monastic system is the sole haven. And what a world, where we have no safety except in

renouncing it! The two sexes created to devour one another must abjure their sex before they gain "The

Peace," as Feltre says, impressively, if absurdly. He will end a monk if he has the courage of his logic. A

Fleetwood shuddered. We are twisted face about to discover our being saved by women from that

horrorthe joining the ranks of the nasal friars. By what women? Bacchante, clearly, if the wife we have is a

He was hungry; he waxed furious with the woman who had flung him out upon the roads. He was thirsty as

well. The brighter something to refresh his thoughts grew and glowed in the form of a shiny table, bearing

tasty dishes, old wines; at an inn or anywhere. But, out of London, an English inn to furnish the dishes and

the wines for a civilized and selfrespecting man is hard to seek, as difficult to find as a perfect skeleton of an

extinct species. The earl's breast howled derision of his pursuit when he drew up at the sign of the Royal

Sovereign, in the dusky hour, and handed himself desperately to Mrs. Rundles' mercy.

He could not wait for a dinner, so his eating was cold meat. Warned by a sip, that his drinking, if he drank,

was to be an excursion in chemical acids, the virtues of an abstainer served for his consolation. Tolerant of

tobacco, although he did not smoke, he fronted the fire, envying Gower Woodseer the contemplative pipe,

which for half a dozen puffs wafted him to bracing deserts, or primeval forests, or old highways with the

swallow thoughts above him, down the Past, into the Future. A pipe is pleasant dreams at command. A pipe

is the concrete form of philosophy. Why, then, a pipe is the alternative of a friar's frock for an escape from

women. But if one does not smoke! . . . Here and there a man is visibly in the eyes of all men cursed: let him

be blest by Fortune; let him be handsome, healthy, wealthy, courted, he is cursed.

Fleetwood lay that night beneath the roof of the Royal Sovereign. Sleep is life's legitimate mate. It will treat

us at times as the faithless wife, who becomes a harrying beast, behaves to her lord. He had no sleep. Having

put out his candle, an idea took hold of him, and he jumped up to light it again and verify the idea that this

room . . . He left the bed and strode round it, going in the guise of an urgent somnambulist, or ghost bearing

Reason and cold together overcame his illogical scruples to lie down on that bed soliciting the sleep desired.

He lay and groaned, lay and rolled. All night the Naval Monarch with the loose cheeks and jelly smile of the

swinging signboard creaked. Flaws of the Northeaster swung and banged him. He creaked high, in

complaint,low, in some partial contentment. There was piping of his boatswain, shrill pipingshrieks of

the whistle. How many nights had that most illfated of brides lain listening to the idiotic uproar! It excused a

touch of craziness. But how many? Not one, not two, ten, twenty:count, count to the exact number of

nights the unhappy girl must have heard those mad colloquies of the hurricane boatswain and the chirpy king.

THE night Lord Fleetwood had passed cured him of the wound Carinthia dealt, with her blunt, defensive

phrase and her Welshman. Seated on his coachbox, he turned for a look the back way leading to Esslemont,

and saw rosed crag and mountain forest rather than the soft undulations of parkland pushing green meadows

or brown copse up the slopes under his eye. She had never been courted: she deserved a siege. She was a

daughter of the racy highlands. And she, who could say to her husband, "I guard my rooms," without sign of

the stageface of scorn or defiance or flinging of the glove, she would have to be captured by siege, it was

clear. She wore an aspect of the confident fortress, which neither challenges nor cries to treat, but commands

respect. How did she accomplish this miracle of commanding respect after such a string of somersaults before

He had to drive Northwestward: his word was pledged to one of his donkey IxionidesAbrane, he

recollectedto be a witness at some contemptible exhibition of the fellow's muscular skill: a match to punt

against a Thames Waterman this time. Odd how it should come about that the giving of his word forced him

now to drive away from the woman once causing him to curse his luck as the prisoner of his word! However,

there was to be an end of it soona change; change as remarkable as Harry Monmouth's at the touching of

his crown. Though in these days, in our jogtrot Old England, half a step on the road to greatness is the

utmost we can hop; and all England jeers at the man attempting it. He caps himself with this or that one of

their titles. For it is not the popular thing among Englishmen. Their hero, when they have done their fighting,

is the wealthy patron of Sport. What sort of creatures are his comrades? But he cannot have comrades unless

he is on the level of them. Yet let him be never so high above them, they charge him and point him as a piece

of cannon; assenting to the flatteries they puff into him, he is their engine. "The idol of the hour is the mob's

wooden puppet, and the doing of the popular thing seed of no harvest," Gower Woodseer says, moderately

well, snuffing incense of his happy delivery. Not to be the idol, to have an aim of our own, there lies the truer

The Mr. Pulpit young men have in them, until their habits have fretted him out, was directing Lord

Fleetwood's meditations upon the errors of the general man, as a cover for lateral references to his hitherto

erratic career: not much worse than a swerving from the right line, which now seemed the desirable road for

him, and had previously seemed so stale, so repulsive. He was, of course, only halfconscious of his

pulpitizing; he fancied the serious vein of his thoughts attributable to a tumbled night. Nevertheless, he had

the question whether that womanpoor girl!was influencing his thoughts. For in a moment, the very word

"respect" pitched him upon her character; to see it a character that emerged beneath obstacles, and overcame

ridicule, won suffrages, won a reluctant husband's admiration, pricked him from distaste to what might really

be taste for her companionship, or something more alarming to contemplate in the possibilities,thirst for it.

He was driving away, and he longed to turn back. He did respect her character: a character angular as her

Respect seems a coolish form of tribute from a man who admires. He had to say that he did not vastly respect

The pupil of Gower Woodseer asked himself to specify the poetry of woman. She is weak and inferior, but

she has it; civilized men acknowledge it; and it is independent, or may be beside her gift of beauty. She has

Well, the flowers of the field are frail things. Pluck one, and you have in your hand the frailest of things. But

reach through the charm of colour and the tale of its beneficence in frailty to the poetry of the flower, and

secret of the myriad stars will fail to tell you more than does that poetry of your little flower. Lord Feltre, at

Well, then, much so with the flowers of the two hands and feet. We do homage to those ungathered, and

reserve our supremacy; the gathered, no longer courted, are the test of men. When the embraced woman

breathes respect into us, she wings a beast. We have from her the poetry of the tasted life; excelling any

gardengate or threshold lyrics called forth by purest early bloom. Respect for her person, for her bearing, for

her character: that is in the sum a beauty plastic to the civilized young man's needs and cravings, as queenly

physical loveliness has never so fully been to him along the walks of life, and as ideal worships cannot be for

our nerving contentment. She brings us to the union of body and soul; as good as to say, earth and heaven.

Secret of all human aspirations, the ripeness of the creeds, is there; and the passion for the woman desired has

Something of this went reeling through Fleetwood; positively to this end; accompanied the while with flashes

of Carinthia, her figure across the varied scenes. Ridicule vanished. Could it ever have existed? If London

had witnessed the scene down in Wales, London never again would laugh at the Whitechapel Countess.

He laughed amicably at himself for the citizen sobriety of these views, on the part of a nobleman whose airy

pleasure it had been to flout your sober citizens, with their toadatthe hop notions, their walled

conceptions, their drab propriety; and felt a petted familiar within him dub all pulpitizing, poetising drivellers

with one of those detested titles, invented by the English as a corrective of their maladies or the excesses of

their higher moods. But, reflection telling him that he had done injury to Carinthiahad inflicted the sorest

of the wounds a young woman a new bride can endure, he nodded acquiescence to the charge of

As a consequence, the truisms flooded him and he lost his guard against our native prosiness. Must we be

prosy if we are profoundly, uncynically sincere? Do but listen to the stuff we are maundering! Extracts of

poetry, if one could hit upon the right, would serve for a relief and a lift when we are in this ditch of the

serious vein. Gower Woodseer would have any number handy to spout. Or Feltre:your convinced end

fervent Catholic has quotations of images and Latin hymns to his Madonna or one of his Catherines, by the

dozen, to suit an enthusiastic fit of the worship of some fair woman, and elude the prosy in commending her.

Feltre is enviable there. As he says, it is natural to worship, and only the Catholics can prostrate themselves

with dignity. That is matter for thought. Stir us to the depths, it will be found that we are poor soupy stuff.

For estimable language, and the preservation of selfrespect in prostration, we want ritual, ceremonial

elevation of the visible object for the soul's adoring through the eye. So may we escape our foul or empty

Lord Feltre seemed to Fleetwood at the moment a more serviceable friend than Gower Woodseer preaching

"Nature"an abstraction, not inspiring to the devout poetic or giving us the tongue above our native prosy.

He was raised and refreshed by recollected lines of a Gregorian chant he and Feltre had heard together under

The Dame collapses. There is little doubt of her having the world to back her in protest against all fine,

filmy work of the exploration of a young man's intricacies or cavities. Let her not forget the fact she has

frequently impressed upon us, that he was "the very wealthiest nobleman of his time," instructive to touch

inside as well as out. He had his share of brains, too. And also she should be mindful of an alteration of

English taste likely of occurrence in the remote posterity she vows she is for addressing after she has

exhausted our present hungry generation. The posterity signified will, it is calculable, it is next to certain,

have studied a developed human nature so far as to know the composition of it a not unequal mixture of the

philosophic and the romantic, and that credible realism is to be produced solely by an involvement of those

two elements. Or else, she may be sure, her story once out of the mouth, goes off dead as the spirits of a

vapour that has performed the stroke of energy. She holds a surprising event in the history of "the wealthiest

nobleman of his time," and she would launch it upon readers unprepared, with the reference to our mysterious

and unfathomable nature for an explanation of the stunning crack on the skull. This may do now. It will not

do ten centuries hence. For the English, too. are a changeable people in the sight of ulterior Time.

One of the good pieces of work Lord Fleetwood could suppose he had performed was recalled to him near the

turning to his mews by the handsome Piccadilly fruitshop. He jumped to the pavement, merely to gratify

Sarah Winch with a word of Madge; and being emotional just then, he spoke of Lady Fleetwood's attachment

to Madge; and he looked at Sarah straight, he dropped his voice: "She said, you remember, you were sisters

Sarah remembered that he had spoken of it before. Two brilliant drops from the deepest of woman's ready

He carried the light of them away. They were such pure jewels of tribute to the Carinthia now seen by him as

worshipping souls of devotees offer to their Madonna for her most glorious adornment.

DESIRING loneliness or else Lord Feltre's company, Fleetwood had to grant a deferred audience at home to

various tradesmen, absurdly fussy about having the house of his leased estate of Calesford furnished

complete and habitable on the very day stipulated by his peremptory orders that the place should be both

habitable and hospitable. They were right, they were excused; grand entertainments of London had been

projected, and he fell into the weariful business with them. thinking of Henrietta's insatiable appetite for the

pleasures. He had taken the lease of this burdensome Calesford, at an eightmiles drive from the Northwest

of town, to gratify the devouring woman's taste: which was, to have all the luxuries of the town in a

Gower Woodseer and he were dining together in the evening. The circumstance was just endurable, but

Gower would play the secretary, and doggedly subjected him to hear a statement of the woeful plight of

Countess Livia's affairs. Gower, commissioned to examine them, remarked: "If we have all the figures!"

"If we could stop the bleeding!" Fleetwood replied. "Come to the Opera tonight; I promised. I promised

Abrane for to morrow. There's no end to it. This gambling mania's a flux. Not one of them except your old

enemy, Corby, keeps clear of it; and they're at him for subsidies, as they are at me, and would be at you or

That was heavy judgment enough, Gower thought. No allusion to Esslemont ensued. The earl ate sparely, and

He was warmed a little at the Opera by hearing Henrietta's honest raptures over her Columelli in the Pirata.

But Lord Brailstone sat behind her, and their exchange of ecstasies upon the tattered pathos of

His countenance in Henrietta's presence had to be studied and interpreted by Livia. Why did it darken? The

demurest of fuliginous intriguers argued that Brailstone was but doing the spiriting required of him, and

would have to pay the penalty unrewarded, let him Italianize as much as he pleased. Not many months

longer, and there would be the bit of an outburst, the whiff of scandal, perhaps a shot, and the rupture of an

improvident alliance, followed by Henrietta's free hand to the moody young earl, who would then have

possession of the only woman he could ever love: and at no cost. Jealousy of a man like Brailstone, however

infatuated the man, was too foolish. He must perceive how matters were tending? The dieaway and

eyeballsattheceiling of a pair of fanatics per la musica might irritate a husband, but the lover should read

and know. Giddy as the beautiful creature deprived of her natural aliment seems in her excusable hunger for

Brailstone peered through his eyelashes at the same shadow of a frown where no frown sat on his friend's

brows. Displeasure was manifest, and why? Fleetwood had given him the dispossessing shrug of the man out

of the run, and the hint of the tip for winning, with the aid of operatic arias; and though he was in Fleetwood's

books ever since the prizefight, neither Fleetwood nor the husband nor any skittishness of a timorous wife

could stop the pursuer bent to capture the fairest and most inflaming woman of her day.

"I come from exile!" said Henrietta; and her plea in excuse of ecstatics wrote her down as confessedly

Ambrose Mallard entered the box, beholding only his goddess Livia. Their eyebrows and inaudible lips

conversed eloquently. He retired like a trumped card on the appearance of M. de St. Ombre. The courtly

Frenchman won the ladies to join him in whipping the cream of the world for five minutes, and passed out

before his flavour was exhausted. Brailstone took his lesson and departed, to spy at them from other boxes

and heave an inflated shirtfront. Young Cressett, the bottle of effervescence, dashed in, and for him Livia's

face was motherly. He rattled a tale of the highway robbery of Sir Meeson Corby on one of his Yorkshire

moors. The picture of the little baronet arose upon the narration, and it amused. Chumley Potts came to

"confirm every item," as he said. "Plucked Corby clean. Pistol at his head. Quite old style. Time, ten *.*.

Suspects Great Britain, King, Lords and Commons, and buttons twenty times tighter. Brosey Mallard down

"Feared to shock: Corby such a favoured swain," Potts accounted for the omission.

"At the palazzo, we were," said Potts. "Luck pretty fair first off. Brosey did his trick, and away and away and

away went he! More old Brosey wins, the wiser he gets. I stayed." He swung to Gower: "Don't drink dry

The rising of the curtain drew his habitual groan from Potts, and he fled to collogue with the goodly number

of honest fellows in the house of music who detested "squallery." Most of these afflicted pilgrims to the

London conservatory were engaged upon the business of the Goddess richly inspiring the Heliconian choir,

but rendering the fountainwaters heady. Here they had to be, if they would enjoy the spectacle of London's

biggest and choicest bouquet: and in them, too, there was an unattached air during Potts' cooling discourse of

turf and tables, except when he tossed them a morsel of tragedy, or the latest joke, not yet past the full gallop

on its course. Their sparkle was transient; woman had them fast. Compelled to think of them as not serious

members of our group, he assisted at the crushroom exit, and the happy riddance of the beautiful cousins

Fleetwood's word was extracted, that he would visit the "palazzo" within a couple of hours.

Potts exclaimed: "Good. You promise. Hang me, if I don't think it's the only certain thing a man can depend

He left the earl and Gower Woodseer to their lunatic talk. He still had his ideas about the association of the

pair. "Hard headed player of his own game, that Woodseer, spite of his MumboJumbooracle kind of

Mallard's turn of luck downward to the deadly drop had come under Potts' first inspection of the table.

Admiring his friend's audacity, deploring his rashness, reproving his persistency, Potts allowed his verdict to

go by results; for it was clear that Mallard and Fortune were in opposition. Something like real awe of the

tremendous encounter kept him from a plunge or a bet. Mallard had got the vertigo, he reported the gambler's

launch on dementedness to the earl. Gower's less experienced optics perceived it. The plainly doomed duellist

with the insensible Black Goddess offered her all the advantages of the Immortals challenged by flesh. His

effort to smile was a line cut awry in wood; his big eyes were those of a cat for sociability; he looked cursed,

and still he wore the smile. In this condition, the gambler runs to emptiness of everything he has, his money,

his heart, his brains, like a coaltruck on the incline of the rails to a collier.

Mallard applied to the earl for a loan of fifty guineas. He had them and lost them, and he came, not begging,

blustering for a second supply; quite in the wrong tone, Potts knew. Fleetwood said: "Back it with pistols,

Brosey;" and, as Potts related subsequently, "Old Brosey had the look of a staked horse."

Fortune and he having now closed the struggle, perforce of his total disarmament, he regained the wits we

forfeit when we engage her. He said to his friend Chummy: "Abrane tomorrow? Ah, yes, punts a Thames

Waterman. Start ofhow many yards? SunburyWalton: good reach. Course of two miles: Braney in good

training. Straight business? I mayn't be there. But you, Chummy, you mind, old Chums, all cases of the kind,

Fleetwood could not persuade Gower to join the party. The philosopher's pretext of much occupation masked

a bashfully sentimental dislike of the flooding of quiet country places by the city's hordes. "You're right,

right," said Fleetwood, in sympathy, resigned to the prospect of despising his associates without a handy

helper. He named Esslemont once, shot up a look at the sky, and glanced it Eastward.

Three coaches were bound for Sunbury from a common startingpoint at nine of the morning. Lord

Fleetwood, Lord Brailstone, and Lord Simon Pitscrew were the whips. Two hours in advance of them, the

earl's famous purveyors of picnic feasts bowled along to pitch the riverside tent and spread the tables. Our

upper and lower London world reported the earl as out on another of his expeditions: and, say what we will,

we must think kindly of a wealthy nobleman ever to the front to enliven the town's dusty eyes and increase

Old England's reputation for preeminence in the Sports. He is the husband of the Whitechapel

Countessgot himself into that mess; but whatever he does, he puts the stamp of style on it. He and the thing

he sets his hand to, they're neat, they're finished, they're fitted to trot together, and they've a shining polish,

natural, like a lily of the fields; or say Nature and Art, like the coat of a thoroughbred led into the paddock by

Present at the start in Piccadilly, Gower took note of Lord Fleetwood's military promptitude to do the work he

had no taste for, and envied the selfcompression which could assume so pleasant an air. He heard here and

there crisp comments on his lordship's coach and horses and personal smartness; the word "style," which

reflects handsomely on the connoisseur conferring it, and the question whether one of the ladies up there was

the countess. His task of unearthing and disentangling the monetary affairs of "one of the ladies" compelled

the wish to belong to the party soon to be towering out of the grasp of bricks, and delightfully gay, spirited,

quick for fun. A fellow, he thought, may brood upon Nature, but the real children of natureor she loves

them bestare those who have the careless chatter, the ready laugh, bright welcome for a holiday. In

catching the hour, we are surely the bloom of the hour? Why, yes, and no need to lose the rosy wisdom of the

On he went to his conclusions; but the Dame will have none of them, though here was a creature bent on

masonrywork in his act of thinking, to build a traveller'srest for thinkers behind him; while the volatile

He was discontented all day, both with himself and the sentences he coined. A small streetboy at his run

along the pavement nowhither, distanced him altogether in the race for the great Secret; precipitating the

thought, that the conscious are too heavily handicapped. The unburdened unconscious win the goal. Ay, but

they leave no legacy. So we must fret and stew, and look into ourselves, and seize the brute and scourge him,

just to make one serviceable step forward: that is, utter a single sentence worth the pondering for guidance.

Gower imagined the fun upon middle Thames; the vulcan face of Captain Abrane; the cries of his backers,

the smiles of the ladies, Lord Fleetwood's happy style in the teeth of tattlean Aurora's chariot for

overriding it. One might hope, might almost see, that he was coming to his better senses on a certain subject.

As for style overriding the worst of indignities, has not Scotia given her poet to the slack dependent of the

gallowstree, who so rantingly played his jig and wheeled it round in the shadow of that institution? Style

was his, he hit on the right style to top the situation, and perpetually will he dip his head out of the noose to

In fact, style is the mantle of greatness; and say that the greatness is beyond our reach, we may at least pray to

Strangest of fancies, most unphilosophically Gower conceived a woman's love as that which would bestow

the gift upon a man so bare of it as he. Where was the woman? He embraced the idea of the sex, and found it

resolving to a form of one. He stood humbly before the one, and she waned into swarms of her sisters. So did

she charge him with the loving of her sex, not her. And could it be denied, if he wanted a woman's love just

to give him a style? No, not that, but to make him feel proud of himself. That was the heart's way of telling

him a secret in owning to a weakness. Within it the one he had thought of forthwith obtained her lodgement.

He discovered this truth, in this roundabout way, and knew it a truth by the warm fireside glow the

Dining alone, as he usually had to do, he was astonished to see the earl enter his room.

"Ah, you always make the right choice!" Fleetwood said, and requested him to come to the library when he

One further mouthful finished dinner, for Gower was anxious concerning the ladies. He joined the earl and

"Safe. Oh yes. We managed to keep it from them," said Fleetwood. "Nothing particular, perhaps you'll think.

Poor devil of a fellow! Father and mother alive, too! He did it out of hearing, that's one merit. Mallard:

Seated plunged in the armchair, with stretched legs and eyes at the black firegrate, Fleetwood told of the

gathering under the tent, and Mallard seen, seen drinking champagne; Mallard no longer seen, not missed.

"He killed himself three fields off. He must have been careful to deaden the sound. Small pocketpistol

hardly big enough tobut anything serves. Couple of brats came running up to Chummy

Potts:`Gentleman's body bloody in a ditch.' Chummy came to me, and we went. Clean dead;in the

mouth, pointed up; hole through the top of the skull. We're crockery! crockery! I had to keep Chummy

standing. I couldn't bring him back to our party. We got help at a farm; the body lies there. And that's not the

worst. We found a letter to me in his pocket pencilledhis last five minutes. I don't see what he could have

done except to go. I can't tell you more. I had to keep my face, rowing and driving back. `But where is Mr.

Potts? Where can Mr. Mallard be?' Queer sensation, to hear the ladies ask! Give me your hand."

The earl squeezed Gower's hand an instant; and it was an act unknown for him to touch or bear a touch; it

Late at night he mounted to Gower's room. The funeral of the day's impressions had not been shaken off. He

kicked at it and sank under it as his talk rambled. "Add five thousand," he commented, on the spread of

Livia's papers over the table. "I've been having an hour with her. Two thousand more, she says. Better

multiply by two and a half for a woman's confession. We have to trust to her for some of the debts of honour.

See her in the morning. No one masters her but you. Mind, the first to be clear of must be St. Ombre. I like

the fellow; but these Frenchmenthey don't spare women. Ambrose,"the earl's eyelids

quivered."Jealousy fired that shot. Quite groundless. She's cool as a marble Venus, as you said. Go straight

from her house to Esslemont. I don't plead a case. Make the best account you can of it. Sayyou may say

my eyes are opened. I respect her. If you think that says little, say more. It can't mean more. Whatever the

Countess of Fleetwood may think due to her, let her name it. Say my view of life, way of life, everything in

me, has changed. I shall follow you. I don't expect to march over the ground. She has a heap to forgive. Her

father owns or boasts, in that book of his Rose Mackrell lent me, he never forgave an injury."

Gower helped the quotation, rubbing his hands over it, for cover of his glee at the words he had been hearing.

"Never forgave an injury without a return blow for it. The blow forgives. Good for the enemy to get it. He

called his hearty old Pagan custom `an action of the lungs' with him. And it's not in nature for injuries to

digest in us. They poison the blood, if we try. But then, there's a manner of hitting back. It is not to go an inch

"Lord Feltre would have an answer for you. She's a wife; and a wife hitting back is not a pleasantwell,

petticoats make the difference. If she's for amends, she shall exact them; and she may be hard to satisfy, she

shall have her full revenge. Call it by any other term you like. I did her a wrong. I don't defend myself; it's not

yet in the Law Courts. I beg to wipe it out, rectify itchoose your phraseto the very fullest. I look for the

He sprang up and traversed the room: "We're all guilty of mistakes at starting: I speak of men. Women are

protected; and if they're not, there's the convent for them, Feltre says. But a man has to live it on before the

world; and this life, with these flies of fellows . . . I fell into it in some way. Absolutely like the first bird I

shot as a youngster, and stood over the battered head and bloody feathers, wondering! There was Ambrose

Mallardthe same splintered bonesbloodcome to his end; and for a woman; that woman the lady

bearing the title of halfmother to me. God help me! What are my sins? She feels nothing, or about as much

as the mortuary paragraph of the newspapers, for the dead man; and I have Ambrose Mallard's look at her and

St. Ombre talking together, before he left the tent to cross the fields. Borrow, beg, or steal for money to play

for her! and not a glimpse of the winning post. St. Ombre's a cool player; that's at the bottom of the story.

He's cool because play doesn't bite him, as it did Ambrose. I should say the other passion has never bitten

him. And he's alive and presentable; Ambrose under a sheet, with Chummy Potts to watch. Chummy cried

like a brat in the street for his lost mammy. I left him crying and sobbing. They have their feelings, these

`children of vapour,' as you call them. But how did I fall into the line with a set I despised? She had my

opinion of her gamblers, and retorted that young Cressett's turn for the fling is my doing. I can't swear it's not.

There's one of my sins. What's to wipe them out! She has a tender feeling for the boy; confessed she wanted

governing. Why, she's young, in a way. She has that particular vice of play. She might be managed. Here's a

lesson for her! Don't you think she might? The right man, the man she can respect, fancy incorruptible! He

must let her see he has an eye for tricks. She's not responsible forhis mad passion was the cause, cause of

everything he did. The kind of woman to send the shaft. You called her `Diana Seated.' You said, `She

doesn't hunt, she sits and lets fly her arrow.' Well, she showed feeling for young Cressett, and her hit at me

was an answer. It struck me on the mouth. But she's an eternal anxiety. A man she respects! A man to govern

Fleetwood hurried his paces. "I couldn't have allowed poor Ambrose. Besides, he had not a chancenever

had in anything. It wants a head, wants the man who can say no to her. `The Reveller's Aurora,' you called

her. She has her beauty, yes. She respects you. I should be relieveda load off me! Tell her, all debts paid;

fifty thousand invested, in her name and her husband's. Tell her, speak it, there's my consentif only the

man to govern her! She has it from me, but repeat it, as from me. That sum and her portion would make a fair

income for the two. Relieved? By heaven, what a relief! Go early. Coach to Esslemont at eleven. Do my work

there. I haven't to repeat my directions. I shall present myself two days after. I wish Lady Fleetwood to do the

part of hostess at Calesford. Tell her I depute you to kiss my son for me. Now I leave you. Good night. I

shan't sleep. I remember your saying, `bad visions come under the eyelids.' I shall keep mine open and

readread her father's book of the Maxims; I generally find two or three at a dip to stimulate. No wonder

she venerates him. That sort of progenitor is your `permanent aristocracy.' Hard enemy. She must have some

of her mother in her, too. Abuse me to her, admit the justice of reproaches, but say, reason, good feeling I

needn't grind at it. Say I respect her. Advise her to swallow the injurynot intended for insult. I don't believe

anything higher than respect can be offered to a woman. No defence of me to her, but I'll tell you, that when I

undertook to keep my word with her, I plainly saidnever mind; good night. If we meet in the morning, let

this business rest until it's done. I must drive to help poor Chums and see about the Inquest."

THEY went to their beds doomed to lie and roam as the solitaries of a sleepless night. They met next day like

a couple emerging from sirocco deserts, indisposed for conversation or even short companionship, much of

the night's dry turmoil in their heads. Each would have preferred the sight of an enemy; and it was hardly

concealed by them, for they inclined to regard one another as the author of their infernal passage through the

Fleetwood was the civiller; his immediate prospective duties being clear, however abhorrent. But he had

inflicted a monstrous disturbance on the man he meant in his rash, decisive way to elevate, if not benefit.

Gower's imagination, foreign to his desires and his projects, was playing juggler's tricks with him,

dramatizing upon hypotheses, which mounted in stages and could pretend to be soberly conceivable,

assuming that the earl's wild hints overnight were a credible basis. He transported himself to his first view of

the Countess Livia, the fountain of similes born of his prostrate adoration, close upon the invasion and

capture of him by the combined liqueurs in the giddy Baden lights; and joining the Arabian magic in his

breast at the time with the more magical reality now proposed as a sequel to it, he entered the land where

Yet it startled him to hear the earl say: "You'll get audience at ten; I've arranged; make the most of the

situation to her. I refuse to help. I foresee it's the only way of solving this precious puzzle. You do me and

every one of us a service past paying. Not a man of her set worth . . . Shebut you'll stop it; no one else can.

Of course, you've had your breakfast. Off, and walk yourself into a talkative mood, as you tell me you do."

"One of the things I do when I've nobody to hear," said Gower, speculating whether the black sprite in this

young nobleman was for sending him as a rod to scourge the lady: an ingenious device, that smelt of

"She will listen; she has not to learn you admire. You admit she has helped to trim and polish, and the rest.

She declares you're incorruptible. There's the ground open. I fling no single sovereign more into that

quicksand, and I want not one word further on the subject. I follow you to Esslemont. Pray, go."

Fleetwood pushed into the hall. A footman was ordered to pack and deposit Mr. Woodseer's portmanteau at

He faced to the opening street door. Lord Feltre stood in the framing of ita welcome sight. The "monastic

man of fashion," of Gower's phrase for him, entered, crooning condolences, with a stretched waxen hand for

his friend, a partial nod for nature's worshipperinefficient at any serious issue of our human affairs, as the

Gower left the two young noblemen to their greetings. Happily for him, philosophy, in the present instance,

after a round of profundities, turned her lantern upon the comic aspect of his errand. Considering the

Countess Livia, and himself, and the tyrant, who benevolently and providentially, or sardonically, hurled

them to their interview, the situation was comic, certainly, in the sense of its being an illumination of this

life's odd developments. For thus had things come about, that if it were possible even to think of the lady's

condescending, he, thanks to the fair one he would see before evening, was armed and proof against his old

infatuation or any renewal of it. And he had been taught to read through the beautiful twilighted woman, as if

she were burnt paper held at the fire consuming her. His hopes hung elsewhere. Nevertheless, an intellectual

demonimp very lively in his head urged him to speculate on such a contest between them, and weigh the

engaging forces. Difficulties were perceived, the scornful laughter on her side was plainly heard; but his

feeling of savage mastery, far from beaten down, swelled so as to become irritable for the trial; and when he

was near her house he held a review of every personal disadvantage he could summon, incited by an array of

limping deficiencies that flattered their arrogant leader with ideas of the power he had in spite of them.

In fact, his emancipation from sentiment inspired the genial mood to tease. Women, having to encounter a

male adept at the weapon for the purpose, must be either voluble or supportingly proud to keep the skin from

shrinking: which is a commencement of the retrogression; and that has frequently been the beginning of a

rout. Now the Countess Livia was a lady of queenly pose and the servitorial conventional speech likely at a

push to prove beggarly. When once on a common platform with a man of agile tongue instigated by his

intellectual demon to pursue inquiries into her moral resources, after a ruthless exposure of the wrecked

material, she would have to be, after the various fashions, defiant, if she was to hold her own against

pressure; and seeing, as she must, the road of prudence point to conciliation, it was calculable that she would

take it. Hence a string of possible events, astounding to mankind, but equally calculable, should one care to

give imagination headway. Gower looked signally Captain Abrane's "fiddler" while he waited at Livia's

house door. A studious intimacy with such a lady was rather like the exposure of the silver moon to the

The Dame will have nought of an interview and colloquy not found mentioned in her collection of ballads,

concerning a person quite secondary in Dr. Glossop's voluminous papers. She as vehemently prohibits a

narration of Gower Woodseer's proposal some hours later, for the hand of the Countess of Fleetwood's

transfixed maid Madge, because of the insignificance of the couple; and though it was a quaint idyll of an

affection slowly formed, rationally based while seeming preposterous, tending to bluntly funny utterances on

both sides. The girl was a creature of the enthusiasms, and had lifted that passion of her constitution into

higher than the worship of sheer physical bravery. She had pitied Mr. Gower Woodseer for his apparently

extreme, albeit reverential, devotion to her mistress. The plainly worded terms of his asking a young woman

of her position and her reputation to marry him came on her like an instrument of dazzling day upon the

closed eyelids of the night, requiring time, and her mistress's consent, and his father's expressed approval,

before she could yield him an answer that might appear a forgetfulness of her station, her ignorance, her

damaged character. Gower protested himself, with truth, a spotted pard, an ignoramus, and an outcast of all

"But what is it you like me for, Mr. Gower?" Madge longed to know, that she might see a way in the strange

land where he had planted her after a whirl; and he replied: "I've thought of you till I can say I love you

He named courage, and its offspring, honesty, and devotedness, constancy. Her bosom rose at the word.

"Yes, constancy," he repeated; "and growing girls have to `turn corners,' as you told me once."

"I did?" said she, reddening under a memory, and abashed by his recollection of a moment she knew to have

Madge went straightway to her mistress and related her great event, in the tone of a confession of crime. Her

It came on a flood. Carinthia's eyes filled; she exclaimed: "Oh, that good man!he chooses my Madge for

wife. She said it, Rebecca said it. Mrs. Wythan saw and said Mr. Woodseer loved my Madge. I hear her

saying it. Then yes, and yes, from me for both your sakes, dear girl. He will have the faithfullest, he will have

She summoned Gower; she clasped his hand, to thank him for appreciating her servant and sister, and for the

happiness she had in hearing it; and she gazed at him and the laden brows of her Madge alternately,

encouraging him to repeat his recital of his pecuniary means, for the poetry of the fact it verified, feasting on

the sketch of a fourroomed cottage and an agricultural labourer's widow for cook and housemaid; Madge to

listen to his compositions of the day in the evening; Madge to praise him, Madge to correct his vanity.

Love was out of the count, but Carinthia's leaping sympathy decorated the baldness of the sketch and spied

his features through the daubed mask he chose to wear as a member of the order of husbands, without taking

it for his fun. Dry material statements presented the reality she doted to think of. Moreover, the marriage of

these two renewed her belief in true marriages, and their intention to unite was evidence of love.

"My journey to England was worth all troubles for the meeting Madge," she said. "I can look with pleasure to

She stopped. Madge felt the quivering upward of a whimper to a sob in her breast. She slipped away.

"It's a day that has come round to be repaired, Lady Fleetwood," said Gower. "If you will. Will you not? He

has had a blowthe death of a friend, violent death. It has broken him. He wants a month or so in your

mountains. I have thought him hard to deal with; he is humane. His enormous wealth has been his tempter.

Madge and I will owe him our means of livelihood, enough for cottagers, until I carve my way. His feelings

are much more independent of his rank than those of most noblemen. He will repeat your kind words to

Madge and me; I am sure of it. He has had heavy burdens; he is young, hardly formed yet. He needs a helper;

I mean, one allied to him. You forgive me? I left him with a Catholic lord for comforter, who regards my

prescript of the study of Nature, when we're in grief, as about the same as an offer of a dish of cold boiled

greens. Silver and ivory images are more consoling. Neither he nor I can offer the right thing for Lord

Fleetwood. It will be found here. And then your mountains. More than I, nearly as much as you, he has a

poet's ardour for mountain land. He and Mr. Wythan would soon learn to understand one another on that

The pleading was crafty, and it was penetrative in the avoidance of stress. Carinthia shook herself to feel

moved. The endeavour chilled her to a notion that she was but half alive. She let the question approach her,

whether Chillon could pardon Lord Fleetwood. She, with no idea of benignness, might speak pardon's word

to him, on a late autumn evening years hence, perhaps, or to his friends tomorrow, if he would considerately

keep distant. She was upheld by the thought of her brother's more honourable likeness to their father, in the

certainty of his refusal to speak pardon's empty word or touch an offending hand, without their father's

warrant for the injury wiped out; and as she had no wish for that to be done, she could anticipate his

For her brother at wrestle with his fallen fortunes was now the beating heart of Carinthia's mind. Her husband

was a shadow there. He did obscure it, and he might annoy; he was unable to set it in motion. He sat there

somewhat like Youth's apprehension of Death:the dark spot seen mistily at times through people's tears, or

visioned as in an ambush beyond the hills; occasionally challenged to stimulate recklessness; oftener

overlooked, acknowledged for the undesired remote of life's conditions, life's evil, fatal, illassorted

yokefellow; and if it was in his power to burst out of his corner and be terrible to her, she could bring up a

force unnamed and unmeasured, that being the blood of her father in her veins. Having done her utmost to

He thought only of the exceeding charity of the intimation; and he may be excused for his not seeing the

feminine full answer it was, in an implied, unmeditated contrast. He went gladly to find his new comrade, his

flower among grassblades, the wonderful creature astonishing him and surcharging his world by setting her

face at him, opening her breast to him, breathing a young man's word of words from a woman's mouth. His

flower among grassblades for a head looking studiously down, she was his fountain of wisdom as well, in

But Madge had put up the "prizefighter's lass," by way of dolly defence, to cover her amazed confusion

when the proposal of this wellliked gentleman to a girl such as she sounded churchy. He knocked it over

easily; it left, however, a bee at his ear and an itch to transfer the buzzer's attentions and tease his darling; for

she had betrayed herself as right good game. Nor is there happier promise of lifelong domestic enlivenment

for a prescient man of Letters than he has in the contemplation of a pretty face showing the sensitiveness to

the sting, which is not allowed to poison her temper, and is short of fetching tears. The dear innocent girl

gave this pleasing promise; moreover, she could be twisted to laugh at herself, just a little. Now, the young

woman who can do that has already jumped the hedge into the highroad of philosophy, and may become a

philosopher's mate in its byways, where the minute discoveries are the notable treasures.

They had their ramble, agreeable to both, despite the admonitory dose administered to one of them. They

might have been espied at a point or two from across the parkpalings; their laughter would have caught an

outside pedestrian's hearing. Whatever the case, Owain Wythan, riding down off Croridge, big with news of

her brother for the countess, dined at her table, and walking up the lane to the Esslemont Arms on a moonless

night, to mount his horse, pitched against an active and, as it was deemed by Gower's observation of his eyes,

a scientific fist. The design to black them finely was attributable to the dyeing accuracy of the stroke. A

single blow had done it. Mr. Wythan's watch and purse were untouched; and a second look at the swollen

blind peepers led Gower to surmise that they were, in the calculation of the striker, his own.

He walked next day to the Royal Sovereign inn. There he came upon the earl driving his phaeton. Fleetwood

jumped down, and Gower told of the mysterious incident, as the chief thing he had to tell, not rendering it so

"Ines, you mean?" Fleetwood cried, and he appeared as nauseated and perplexed as he felt. Why should Ines

assault Mr. Wythan? It happened that the pugilist's patron had, within the last fifteen minutes, driven past a

certain thirtyacre meadow, sight of which on his way to Carinthia had stirred him. He had even then an idea

"But you've nothing to go by," he said. "Why guess at this rascal more than another?"

Gower quoted Mrs. Rundles and the ostler for witnesses to Kit's visit yesterday to the Royal Sovereign,

"I guess pretty clearly, because I suspect he was hanging about and saw me and Madge together."

"Consolations for failures in town?by the way, you are complimented, and I don't think you deserved it.

However, there was just the chance to stop a run to perdition. But, Madge? Madge? I'd swear to the girl!"

"Not so hard as I," said Gower, and spoke of the oath to come between the girl and him.

Fleetwood's dive into the girl's eyes drew her before him. He checked a spirt of exclamations.

The earl was impressionable to the remark, in his disgust at the incident. It added a touch of a new kind of

"You undervalue Lord Feltre. You avoid your adversaries," Fleetwood now rebuked his hearer. "It's an easy

way to have the pull of them in your own mind. You might learn from him. He's willing for controversy.

Natureworshipor `aboriginal genuflexion,' he calls it; Anglicanism, Methodism; he stands to engage

them. It can't be doubted, that in days of trouble he has a faith `stout as a rock, with an oracle in it,' as he says;

and he's right,`men who go into battle require a rock to back them or a staff to lean on.' You have your

`secret,' you think; as far as I can see, it's to keep you from going into any form of battle."

The new influence at work on the young nobleman was evident, if only in the language used.

"Yes, in love. The proof of it is, I've asked her now I can support her as a cottager leaning on the Three Per

"Well, it helps you to a human kind of talk. It carries out your theories. I never disbelieved in your honesty.

The wisdom's another matter. Did you ever tell any one, that there's not an act of a man's life lies dead behind

"By that," rejoined Gower, "I can say Lord Feltre proves there's wisdom in the truisms of devoutness."

Fleetwood was looking on the backward of his days, beholding a melancholy sunset, with a grimace in it.

"Lord Feltre might show you the `leanness of Philosophy'; you would learn from hearing him:`an old

"See a higher than your own head, good sir. But, hang the man! he manages to hit on the thing he wants."

Fleetwood set his face at Gower with cutting heartiness. "In love, you say, and Madge: and mean it to be the

holy business! Well, poor old Chummy always gave you credit for knowing how to play your game. She has

given proof she's a good girl. I don't see why it shouldn't end well. That attack on the Welshman's the bad

lookout. Explained, if you like, but women's impressions won't get explained away. We must down on our

"Excellent! You speak like a fellow recording the devout observances of a great dame with her minor and

"A woman without religion, Gower Woodseer, is a weed on the water, or she's hard as nails. We shall see.

Generally, Madge and the youngster parade the park at this hour. I drive round to the stables. Go in and offer

your version of that rascally dog's trick. It seems the nearest we can come at. He's a sot, and drunken dogs 'll

They trotted through Esslemont Park gates. "I've got that place, Calesford, on my hands, too," the earl said,

He and Gower were struck by a common thought of the extraordinary burdens his indulgence in impulses

drew upon him. Present circumstances pictured to Gower the opposing weighed and matured good reason for

his choosing Madge, and he complimented himself in his pity for the earl. But Fleetwood, as he reviewed a

body of acquaintances perfectly free from the wretched run in harness, though they had their fits and their

whims, was pushed to the conclusion that fatalism marked his particular course through life. He could not

hint at such an idea to the unsympathetic fellow, or rather, the burly antagonist to anything of the sort, beside

him. Lord Feltre would have understood and appreciated it instantly. Where is aid to be had if we have the

Fates against us? Feltre knew the Power, he said; was an example of "the efficacy of supplications"; he had

been "fatally driven to find the Power," and had found iton the road to Rome, of course: not a delectable

road for an English nobleman, except that the noise of another convert in pilgrimage on it would deal our

English world a lively smack, the very stroke that heavy body wants. But the figure of a "monastic man of

fashion" was antipathetic to the earl, and he flouted an English Protestant mass merely because of his being

He cast his bitter cud aside. "My man should have arrived. Lady Fleetwood at home?"

"For greater security. Lady Arpington praises the thoughtful mother. I rather expected to see the child."

Letting him have his cushion for pins, Gower said: "It needs all my philosophy."

He was pricked and probed for the next five minutes; not bad rallying, the earl could be smart when he

smarted. Then they descended the terrace to meet Lady Fleetwood driving her pony trap. She gave a brief

single nod to the salute of her lord, quite in the townlady's manner, surprisingly.

THE home of husband and wife was under one roof at last. Fleetwood went, like one deported, to his wing of

the house, physically sensible, in the back turned to his wife's along the corridor, that our ordinary

comparison for the division of a wedded twain is correct. She was Arctic, and Antarctic he had to be, perforce

of the distance she put between them. A removal of either of them from lifeor from "the act of breathing,"

as Gower Woodseer's contempt of the talk about death would call itwas an imaginable way of making it a

wider division. Ambrose Mallard was far enough from his fatal lady now farther than the Poles asunder.

Ambrose, if the clergy will allow him, has found his peace. But the road and the means he chose were a

The blotting of our character, to close our troubles, is the final proof of our being "sons of vapour," according

to Gower Woodseer's heartless term for poor Ambrose and the lot. They have their souls; and above

philosophy, "natural" or unnatural, they may find a shelter. They can show in their desperation that they are

made of blood, as philosophers rather fail of doing. An insignificant, brainless creature like Feltre had wits,

by the aid of his religion, to help or be charitable to his fellows, particularly the sinners, in the crises of life,

Information of her ladyship's having inspected the apartment, to see to the minutest of his customary luxuries,

cut at him all round. His valet had it from the footmen and maids; and their speaking of it meant a liking for

their mistress; and that liking, added to her official solicitude on his behalf, touched a soft place in him and

blew an icy wind; he was frozen where he was warmed. Here was evidence of her intending the division to be

a fixed gap. She had entered this room and looked about her. He was here to feel her presence in her absence.

Some one or something had schooled her, too. Her largeeyed directness of gaze was the same as at that inn

and in Wales, but her easy sedateness was novel, her English almost the tone of the English world: he

His desire to be with her was the desire to escape the phantasm of the woman haunting to subjugate him

when they were separate. He could kill illusion by magnifying and clawing at her visible angles and audible

false notes; and he did it until his recollections joined to the sight of her, when a clash of the thought of what

she had been and the thought of what she was had the effect of conjuring a bitter sweet image that was a more

seductive illusion. Strange to think, this woman once loved the man who was not half the value of the man

she no longer loved. He took a shot at cynicism, but hit no mark. This woman protected her whole sex.

They sat at the dinnertable alone, thanks to a handsome wench's attractions for a philosopher. Married, and

parents of a lusty son, this was their first sitting at table together. The mouth that said "I guard my rooms"

was not obtruded; she talked passingly of her brother, much of Lady Arpington and of old Mr. Woodseer;

and, though she reserved a smile, there was no look of a lock on her face. She seemed pleased to be treated

very courteously; she returned the stately politeness in exactest measure; very simply, as well. Her face had

now an air of homeliness, well suited to an English household interior. She could chat. Any pauses occurring,

he was the one guilty of them; she did not allow them to be barrier chasms, or "strids" for the leap with effort;

she crossed them like the mountain maid over a gorge's plankkept her tones perfectly. Her Madge and Mr.

Gower Woodseer made a conversable topic. She was inquisitive for accounts of Spanish history and the land

They passed into the drawingroom. She had heard of the fate of the poor child in Wales, she said, without a

"I see now, I ought to have backed your proposal," he confessed, and was near on shivering. She kept silent,

Open on her workbasket was a Spanish guidebook and a map attached to it. She listened to descriptions of

Cadiz, Malaga, Seville, Granada. Her curiosity was chiefly for detailed accounts of Catalonia and the

"Hardly the place for you; there's a perpetual heaving of Carlism in those mountains; your own are quieter for

travellers," he remarked; and for a moment her lips moved to some likeness of a smile; a dimple in a flowing

Feeling acutely that hostility would have brought them closer than her uninviting civility, he spoke of the

assault on Mr. Wythan, and Gower Woodseer's conjecture, and of his having long since discharged the rascal

To which her unreproachful answerer, "You made use of those men, my lord," sent a cry ringing through

him, recalling Feltre's words, as to the grip men progressively are held in by their deeds done.

"Oh, quite true, we change our views and ways of life," he said, thinking she might set her considerations on

other points of his character. But this reflection was a piece of humility not yet in his particular estimates of

his character, and he spurned it: an act of pride that drove his mind, for occupation, to contemplate hers;

which speedily became an embrace of her character, until he was asking whether the woman he called wife

and dared not clasp was one of those rarest, who can be idealized by virtue of their being known. For the

young man embracing a character loses grasp of his own, is plucked out of himself and passes into it, to see

the creature he is with the other's eyes, and feel for the other as a very self. Such is the privilege and the

Gower Woodseer's engagement with the girl Madge was a happier subject for expatiation and agreement. Her

deeper tones threw a light on Gower, and where she saw goodness he could at least behold the natural

"The girl shall have a dowry from me," he said; and the sum named was large. Her head bent

acknowledgingly; money had small weight with her now. His perception of it stripped him and lamed him.

He wished her ladyship good night. She stood up and performed a semiceremonious obeisance, neatly

Probably she would sleep. No such expectation could soothe the friend, and some might be thinking

misleader, of Ambrose Mallard, before he had ocular proof that the body lay underground. His promise was

given to follow it to the grave, a grave in consecrated earth. Ambrose died of the accidental shot of a

pocketpistol he customarily carried loaded. Two intimate associates of the dead man swore to that habit of

his. They lied to get him undisputed Christian burial. Aha! The earl laughed outright at Chummy Potts's

nursery qualms. The old fellow had to do it, and he lied like a man for the sake of Ambrose Mallard's family.

Can ecclesiastical casuists decide upon cases of conscience affecting men of the world?

A council sat upon the case the whole night long. A committee of the worldly held argumentation in a lower

These are nights that weaken us to below the level of women. A shuttle worked in Fleetwood's head. He

defended the men of the world. Lord Feltre oiled them, damned them, kindled them to a terrific expiatory

blaze, and extinguishingly salved and wafted aloft the released essence of them. Maniacal for argument,

Fleetwood rejected the forgiveness of sins, if sins they be. Prove them sins, and the suffering is of necessity

everlasting, his insomnia logic insisted. Whichever side he took, his wife was against him; not in speech, but

in her look. She was a dumb figure among the wranglers, clouded up to the neck. Her look said she knew

He departed next day for London, after kissing his child; and he would have done wisely to abstain from his

exhibition of the paternal. Knowing it a step to conciliation, he checked his impulsive warmth, under the

apprehension that the mother would take it for a piece of acting to propitiateand his lips pecked the baby's

cheek. Its mother held arms for it immediately. Not without reason did his heart denounce her as a mere

The recent series of feverishly sleepless nights disposed him to snappish irritability or the thirst for

tenderness. Gower had singular experiences of him on the drive Northwestward. He scarcely spoke; he said

once: "If you mean to marry, you'll be wanting to marry soon, of course," and his curt nod before the reply

was formulated appeared to signify, the sooner the better, and deliverance for both of us. Honest though he

might be, sometimes deep and sometimes picturesque, the philosopher's day had come to an end. How can

Philosophy minister to raw wounds, when we are in a raging gale of the vexations, battered to right and left!

Religion has a nourishing breast: Philosophy is breastless. Religion condones offences: Philosophy has no

forgiveness, is an untenanted confessional:"wide air to a cry in anguish," Feltre says.

All the way to London Fleetwood endured his companion, letting him talk when he would.

He spent the greater part of the night discussing human affairs and spiritual with Lord Feltre, whose

dialectical exhortations and insinuations were of the feeblest, but to an isolated young man, yearning for the

tenderness of a woman thinking but of her grievances, the ointment brought comfort.

It soothed him during his march to and away from Ambrose Mallard's grave; where it seemed to him curious

and even pitiable that Chumley Potts should be so inconsolably shaken. Well, and if the priests have the

secret of strengthening the backbone for a bend of the knee in calamity, why not go to the priests, Chummy?

Potts' hearing was not addressed; nor was the chief person in the meditation affected by a question that

Business at Calesford kept Fleetwood hanging about London several days further; and his hatred of a place he

wasted time and money to decorate grew immeasurable. It distorted the features of the beautiful woman for

whose pleasure the grand entertainments to be held there had, somewhere or otherwhen felon spectres

He could then return to Esslemont. Gower was told kindly, with intentional coldness, that he could take a seat

in the phaeton if he liked; and he liked, and took it. Anything to get to that girl of his!

Whatever the earl's inferiors did, their inferior station was not suffered to discolour it for his judgement. But

an increasing antagonism to Woodseer's philosophywhich the fellow carried through with perpetual

scorings of satisfaction caused him to set a hard eye on the damsel under the grisly spotting shadow of the

sottish bruiser, of whom, after once touching the beast, he could not rub his hands clean; and he chose to

consider the winning of the prizefighter's lass the final triumph or flag on the apex of the now despised

philosophy. Vain to ask how he had come to be mixed up with the lot, or why the stolidly conceited,

pretentious fellow had seat here, as by right, beside him! We sow and we reap; "plant for sugar and taste the

cane," some one saysthis Woodseer, probably; he can, when it suits him, tickle the ears of the worldlings.

And there is worthier stuff to remember; stuff to nourish: Feltre's "wisdom of our fathers," rightly named

More in the country, when he traversed sweep and rise of open land, Carinthia's image began to shine, and

she threw some of her light on Madge, who made Woodseer appear tolerable, sagacious, absurdly enviable,

as when we have the fit to wish we were some fourfoot. The fellow's philosophy wore a look of practical

craft. He was going to the girl he liked, and she was, one could swear, an honest girl; and she was a comely

girl, a girl to stick to a man. Her throwing over a sot was creditable. Her mistress loved her. That said much

for any mortal creature. Man or woman loved by Carinthia could not be cowardly, could not be vile, must

have high qualities. Next to Religion, she stood for a test of us. Had she any strong sense of Religion, in

addition to the formal trooping to one of their pallid Protestant churches? Lord Feltre might prove useful to

her. For merely the comprehension of the signification of Religion steadies we. It had done that for him, the

He broke a prolonged silence by remarking to Gower: "You haven't much to say today"; and the answer

was: "Very little. When I'm walking, I'm picking up; and when I'm driving I'm putting together."

Gower was rallied on the pursuit of the personal object in both cases. He pointed at sheep, shepherd, farmer,

over the hedge, all similarly occupied; and admitted shamelessly, that he had not a thought for company,

scarce a word to fling. "Ideas in gestation are the dullest matter you can have."

"There I quite agree with you," said Fleetwood. Abrane, Chummy Potts, Brailstone, little Corby, were

brighter comrades. And these were his Ixionides! Hitherto his carving of a way in the world had been

sufficiently illconsidered. Was it preferable to be a loutish philosopher? Since the death of Ambrose

Mallard, he felt Woodseer's title for that crew grind harshly; and he tried to provoke a repetition of it, that he

might burst out in wrathful defence of his friendsto be named friends when they were vilified: defence of

poor Ambrose at least, the sinner who, or one as bad, might have reached to pardon through the priesthood.

Entering Esslemont air, Fleetwood tossed his black mood to the winds. She breathed it. She was a mountain

girl, and found it hard to forgive our lowlands. She would learn tolerance, taking her flights at seasons. The

yacht, if she is anything of a sailor, may give her a taste of England's pleasures. She will have a special

allowance for distribution among old Mr. Woodseer's people. As to the rest of the Countess of Fleetwood's

wishes, her family ranks with her husband's in claims of any kind on him. There would beshe would

require and had a right to demandsay, a warm halfhour of explanations: he knew the tone for them, and

so little did he revolve it apprehensively, that his mind sprang beyond, to the hearing from her mouth of her

not intending further to "guard her rooms." How quietly the words were spoken! There was a charm in the

retrospect of her mouth and manner. One of the rare women who never pout or attitudinize, she could fling

her glove gracefullyone might add, capturingly: under every aspect, she was a handsome belligerent. The

words he had to combat pleased his memory. Some good friend, Lady Arpington probably, had instructed her

Concerning himself, he made no stipulation, but he reflected on Lord Feltre's likely estimate of her as a bit of

a heathen. And it might be to her advantage, were she and Feltre to have some conversations. Whatever the

faith, a faith should exist, for without the sentiment of religion, a woman, he says, is where she was when she

left the gates of Eden. A man is not much farther. Feltre might have saved Ambrose Mallard. He is, however,

right in saying, that the woman with the sentiment of religion in her bosom is a box of holy incense

distinguishing her from all other women. Empty of it, she is devil's bait. At best, she is a creature who cannot

overlook an injury, or must be exacting God knows what humiliations before she signs the treaty.

Informed at the house that her ladyship had been staying up on Croridge for the last two days, Fleetwood sent

his hardest shot of the eyes at Gower. Let her be absent: it was equal to the first move of war, and absolved

him from contemplated proposals to make amends. But the enforced solitary companionship with this

ruminator of a fellow set him asking whether the godless dog he had picked up by the wayside was not

incarnate another of the sins he had to expiate. Day after day, almost hourly, some new stroke fell on him.

Why? Was he selected for persecution because he was wealthy? The Fates were driving him in one direction,

This further black mood evaporated, and like a cessation of English stormweather bequeathed him gloom.

Ashamed of the mood, he was nevertheless directed by its final shadows to see the ruminating tramp in

Gower, and in Madge the prizefighter's jilt: and round about Esslemont a world eyeing an Earl of

Fleetwood, who painted himself the man he was, or was held to be, by getting together such a collection,

from the daughter of the Old Buccaneer to the ghastly corpse of Ambrose Mallard. Why, clearly, wealth was

the sole origin and agent of the mischief. With somewhat less of it, he might have walked in his place among

the nation's elect, the "herd of the gilt horns," untroubled by ambitions and ideas.

Arriving thus far, he chanced to behold Gower and Madge walking over the grounds near the western

plantation, and he regretted the disappearance of them, with the fellow talking hard into the girl's ear. Those

two could think he had been of some use. The man pretending to philosophical depth was at any rate honest;

one could swear to the honesty of the girl, though she had been a reckless hussy. Their humble little hopes

and means to come to union approached, after a fashion, hymning at his ears. Those two were pleasanter to

look on than amorous lords and great ladies, who are interesting only when they are wicked.

Four days of desolate wanderings over the estate were occupied chiefly in his decreeing the fall of timber that

obstructed views, and was the more imperatively doomed for his bailiff's intercession. "Sound wood" the

trees might be: they had to assist in defraying the expense of separate establishments. A messenger to

Queeney from Croridge then announced the Countess's return "for a couple of hours." Queeney said it was

the day when her ladyship examined the weekly bills of the household. That was in the early morning. The

post brought my lord a letter from Countess Livia, a most infrequent writer. She had his word to pay her

debts; what next was she for asking? He shrugged, opened the letter, and stared at the half dozen lines. The

signification of them rapped on his consciousness of another heavy blow before he was perfectly intelligent.

All possible anticipation seemed here outdone: insomuch that he held palpable evidence of the Fates at work

Fleetwood printed the lines on his eyeballs. They were the politely flowing feminine of a statement of the

fact, which might have been in one line. They flourished wantonly: they were deadly blunt. And of all men,

this youngster, who struck at him through her lips with the reproach, that he had sped the goodlooking little

CARINTHIA reached Esslemont near noon. She came on foot, and had come unaccompanied, stick in hand,

her dress looped for the roads. Madge bustled her shorter steps up the park beside her; Fleetwood met her on

"No one can be spared at Croridge," she said. "I go back before dark." Apology was not thought of; she

"He has enemies about him. They are the workmen of Lord Levellier. They attacked Lekkatts the other night,

and my uncle fired at them out of a window and wounded a man. They have sworn they will be revenged.

"Two men, very well; they don't want, if there's danger, a woman's aid in protecting him?"

She smiled, and her smile was like the hint of the steel blade an inch out of sheath.

"Oh no! No one would think that," Fleetwood said hurriedly and heartily. "Least of all men, I, Carinthia. But

"It is by Mr. Wythan's dead wife's request that I call him by his name. He is our friend. He is a man to trust."

"The situation . . ." Fleetwood hung swaying between the worldly view of it and the white light of this

woman's nature flashed on his emotion into his mind. "You shall be trusted for judging. If he is your friend,

he is my friend. I have missed the sight of our boy. You heard I was at Esslemont?"

Her head assented. There was nothing to complain of, but he had not gained a step.

The rule is, that when we have yielded initiative to a woman, we are unable to recover it without uncivil

bluster. So, therefore, women dealing with gentlemen are allowed unreasonable advantages. He had never

granted it in colloquy or act to any woman but this one. Consequently, he was to see, that if the gentleman in

him was not put aside, the lady would continue moving on lines of the independence he had likewise yielded,

or rather flung, to her. Unless, as a result, he besieged and wooed his wife, his wife would hold on a course

inclining constantly farther from the union he desired. Yet how could he begin to woo her if he saw no spark

of womanly tenderness? He asked himself, because the beginning of the wooing might be checked by the call

on him for words of repentance only just possible to conceive. Imagine them uttered, and she has the

She would not have it, certainly, with a downright brute. But he was not that. In an extremity of bitterness, he

fished up a drowned old thought, of all his torments being due to the impulsive halfbrute he was. And

between the good and the bad in him, the sole point of strength was a pride likely, as the smooth simplicity of

her indifference showed him, soon to be going down prostrate beneath her feet. Wholly a brutewell? He

had to say, that playing the perfect brute with any other woman he would have his mastery. The summoning

of an idea of personal power to match this woman in a contest was an effort exhausting the idea.

They passed out of Esslemont gates together at that hour of the late afternoon when Southwesterly breezes,

after a summer gale, drive their huge white flocks over blue fields fresh as morning, on the march to pile the

crown of the sphere, and end a troubled day with grandeur. Up the lane by the park they had open land to the

She looked up, thinking of the happy long day's walk with her brother to the Styrian Baths. Pleasure in the

sight made her face shine superbly. "A flying Switzerland, Mr. Woodseer says," she replied. "England is

beautiful on days like these. For walking, I thinly the English climate very good."

He dropped a murmur: "It should suit so good a walker," and burned to compliment her spirited easy

stepping, and scorned himself for the sycophancy it would be before they were on the common ground of a

restored understanding. But an approval of any of her acts threatened him with enthusiasm for the whole of

"You quote Woodseer to me, Carinthia. I wish you knew Lord Feltre. He can tell you of every cathedral,

convent, and monastery in Europe and Syria. Nature is well enough; she is, as he says, a savage. Men's

works, acting under divine direction to escape from that tangle, are better worthy of study, perhaps. If one has

"You would not needexcept, yes, one thing. Your father's book speaks of not forgiving an injury."

"My father does. He thinks it weakness to forgive an injury. Women do, and are disgraced, they are thought

"Let offending people go. He would not punish them. They may go where they will be forgiven. For them our

religion is a happy retreat; we are glad they have it. My father and my brother say that injury forbids us to be

friends again. My father was injured by the English Admiralty: he never forgave it; but he would have fought

one of their ships and offered his blood any day, if his country called to battle."

"I am a woman. I follow my brother, whatever he decides. It is not to say he is the enemy of persons

"You say you are a woman; you have a heart, then?for, if not, what have you?" was added in the tone.

The dwarf square tower of Croridge village church fronted them against the sky, seen of both.

"By all the saints! you hit hard. Justly. Not you. Our deeds are the hard hitters. We learn when they begin to

flagellate, stroke upon stroke! Suppose we hold a costly thing in the hand and dash it to the groundno

recovery of it, none! That must be what your father meant. I can't regret you are a mother. We have a son, a

bond. How can I describe the man I was!" he muttered,"possessed! sort of werewolf! You are my wife?"

"My father and my mother spoke to me of the marriagetie. I read the service before I stood at the altar. It is

"Carinthia, if he bids you, begs you to renew it? God knows what you may save me from!"

"Pray to God. Do not beg of me, my lord. I have my brother and my little son. No more of husband for me!

God has given me a friend, too,a man of humble heart, my brother's friend, my dear Rebecca's husband.

With those words she barred the gates on him; at the same time she bestowed the frank look of an amiable

face brilliant in the lively red of her exercise, in its bentbow curve along the forehead, out of the line of

beauty, touching, as her voice was, to make an undertone of anguish swell an ecstasy. So he felt it, for his

mood was now the lover's. A torture smote him, to find himself transported by that voice at his ear to the

"I propose to call on Captain KirbyLevellier tomorrow, Carinthia," he said. "The name of his house?"

"My brother is not now any more in the English army," she replied. "He has hired a furnished house named

She bowed, she stepped on. On she sped, leaving him at the stammered beginning of his appeal to her.

Their parting by the graveyard of the church that had united them was what the world would class as curious.

To him it was a further and a wellmarked stroke of the fatality pursuing him. He sauntered by the graveyard

wall until her figure slipped out of sight. It went like a puffed candle, and still it haunted the corner where last

seen. Her vanishing seemed to say, that less of her belonged to him than the phantom his eyes retained behind

There was in his pocket a memento of Ambrose Mallard, that the family had given him at his request. He felt

the lump. It had an answer for all perplexities. It had been charged and emptied since it was in his possession;

and it could be charged again. The thing was a volume as big as the world to study. For the touch of a finger,

one could have its entirely satisfying contents, and fly and be a raven of that night wherein poor Ambrose

He leaned on the churchyard wall, having the graves to the front of eyes bent inward. They were Protestant

graves, not so impressive to him as the wreathed and gilt of those under dedication to Feltre's Madonna. But

whatever they were, they had ceased to nurse an injury or feel the pain for having inflicted it. Their wrinkles

had gone from them, whether of anger or suffering. Ambrose Mallard lay as peaceful in consecrated ground:

and Chumley Potts would be unlikely to think that the helping to lay Ambrose in his quiet last home would

cost him a roasting until priestly intercession availed. So Chummy continues a Protestant; dull consciences

can! But this is incomprehensible, that she, nursing her injury, should be perfectly civil. She is a woman

without emotion. She is a woman full of emotion, one man knows. She ties him to her, to make him feel the

lash of his remorse. He feels it because of her casting him from herand so civilly. If this were a Catholic

church, one might go in and give the stained soul free way to get a cleansing. As it is, here are the graves; the

Fleetwood read the name of the family of Meek on several boards at the head of the graves. Jonathan Meek

died at the age of ninetyfive. A female Meek had eightynine years in this life. Ezra Meek gave up the ghost

prematurely, with a couplet, at eightyone. A healthy spot, Croridge, or there were virtues in the Meek

family, he reflected, and had a shudder that he did not trace to its cause, beyond an acknowledgment of a

HIS customary wrestle with the night drove Lord Fleetwood in the stillness of the hour after matins from his

hated empty Esslemont up again to the village of the longlived people, enjoying the moist earthiness of the

air off the ironstone. He rode fasting, a good preparatory state for the simple pleasures, which are virtually the

Great Nourisher's teats to her young. The earl was relieved of his dejection by a sudden filling of his nostrils.

Fat Esslemont underneath had no such air. Except on the mornings of his walk over the Salzkammergut and

Black Forest regions, he had never consciously drawn that deep breath of the satisfied rapture, charging the

whole breast with thankfulness. Huntsmen would know it, if the chase were not urgent to pull them at the tail

of the running beast. Once or twice on board his yacht he might have known something like it, but the salt

seabreeze could not be disconnected from his companion Lord Feltre, and a thought of Feltre swung vapour

of incense all about him. Breathing this air of the young sun's kiss of earth, his invigoration repelled the

Besides, as he had told his friend, it was the sincerity of the Catholic religion, not the seductiveness, that won

him to a form of homagethe bend of the head of a foreign observer at a midnight mass. Asceticism, though

it may not justify error, is a truth in itself, it is the essence extracted of the scourge, flesh vanquished; and it

stands apart from controversy. Those monks of the forested mountain heights, rambling for their herbs, know

the blessedness to be found in mere breathing: a neighbour readiness to yield the breath inspires it the more.

For when we do not dread our end, the sense of a free existence comes back to us: we have the prized gift to

infancy under the piloting of manhood. But before we taste that happiness we must perform our penance; "No

living happiness can be for the unclean," as the holy father preached to his flock of the monastery dispersing

Ay, but penance? penance? Is there not such a thing as the doing of penance out of the Church, in the manly

fashion? So to regain the right to be numbered among the captains of the world's fighting men, incontestably

the best of comrades, whether or no they led away on a cataract leap at the gates of life. Boldly to say we did

The penitential act means, youth put behind us, and a steady course ahead. But, for the keeping of a steady

course, men made of blood in the walks of the world must be steadied. Say it plainlymated. There is the

humiliating point of our human condition. We must have beside us and close beside us the woman we have

learned to respect; supposing ourselves lucky enough to have found her;"that required other scale of the

human balance," as Woodseer calls her now he has got her, wiser than Lord Feltre in reference to men and

women. We get no balance without her. That is apparently the positive law; and by reason of men's wretched

enslavement, it is the dance to dissolution when we have not honourable union with women. Feltre's view of

women sees the devilish or the angelical; and to most men women are knaves or ninnies. Hence do we behold

He embraced the respected woman's character, with the usual effect:to see with her sight; and she beheld a

speckled creature of the intermittent whims and moods and spites; the universal Patron, whose ambition to be

leader of his world made him handle foul brutescorrupt and cause their damnation, they retort, with curses,

in their pangs. She was expected to pardon the husband, who had not abstained from his revenge on her for

keeping him to the pledge of his word. And what a revenge!he had flung the world at her. She is

consequently to be the young bride she was on the memorable morning of the drive off these heights of

Croridge down to thirtyacre meadow! It must be a saint to forgive such offences; and she is not one, she is

deliciously not one, neither a Genevi�ve nor a Griselda. He handed her the rod to chastise him. Her exchange

of Christian names with the Welshman would not do it; she was too transparently sisterly, provincially

simple; she was, in fact, respected. Any whipping from her was child's play to him, on whom, if he was to be

made to suffer, the vision of the intense felicity of austerest asceticism brought the sensation as bracingly as

the Boreal morning animates men of high blood in ice regions. She could but gently sting, even if vindictive.

Along the heights, outside the village, some way below a turn of the road to Lekkatts, a gentleman waved

A glow of his countess's friendliness for this openfaced, promptspeaking, good fellow of the faintly inky

eyelids, and possibly sheepish inclinations, melted Fleetwood. Our downright repentance of misconduct

toward a woman binds us at least to the tolerant recognition of what poor scraps of consolement she may

have picked up between then and nowwhen we can stretch fist in flame to defy it on the oath of her being a

The earl alighted and said: "Her brother, I suspect, is the key of the position."

"He's worth itshe loves her brother," said Mr. Wythan, betraying a feature of his quick race, with whom

Gratified by the instant apprehension of his meaning, Fleetwood interpreted the Welshman's. "I have to see

the brother worthy of her love. Can you tell me the hour likely to be convenient?"

Mr. Wythan thought an appointment unnecessary: which conveyed the sufficient assurance of audience

"Know him as if I had known him for years. They both come to the mind as faith comesno saying how;

Fleetwood eyed the Welsh gentleman, with an idea that he might readily do the same by him.

Mr. Wythan's quarters were at the small village inn, whither he was on his way to breakfast. The earl slipped

an arm through the bridle reins and walked beside him, listening to an account of the situation at Lekkatts. It

was that extraordinary complication of moves and checks which presents in the main a knot, for the powers

above to cut. A miserly old lord withholds arrears of wages; his workmen strike at a critical moment; his

nephew, moved by common humanity, draws upon crippled resources to supply their extremer needs, though

they are ruining his interests. They made one night a demonstration of the terrorizing sort round Lekkatts, to

give him a chorus; and the old lord fired at them out of window and wounded a man. For that they vowed

vengeance. All the new gunpowder milled in Surrey was, for some purpose of his own, stored by Lord

Levellier on the alder island of the pond near his workshops, a quarter of a mile below the house. They

refused, whatever their object, to let a pound of it be moved, at a time when at last the Government had

undertaken to submit it to experiments. And there they stood on ground too strong for "the Captain," as they

called him, to force, because of the quantity stored at Lekkatts being largely beyond the amount under cover

of Lord Levellier's licence. The old lord was very ill, and he declined to see a doctor, but obstinately kept

from dying. His nephew had to guard him, and at the same time support an enemy having just cause of

complaint. This, however, his narrow means would not much longer permit him to do. The alternative was

then offered him of either siding arbitrarily against the men and his conscience or of taking a course

"imprudent on the part of a presumptive heir," Mr. Wythan said hurriedly at the little inn's doorsteps.

Her name on the earl's lips drew a keen shot of the eye from Mr. Wythan, and he read the signification of the

Fleetwood's hand was out for a goodbye, and the hand was grasped by one who looked happy in doing it.

He understood and trusted the man after that, warmed in thinking how politic his impulses could be.

His intention of riding up to Croridge at noon to request his interview with Mr. KirbyLevellier was then

"The key of the position, as you said," Mr. Wythan remarked, not proffering an opinion of it more than was

expressed by a hearty, rosy countenance, that had to win its way with the earl before excuse was found for the

Cantering back to that home of the loves of Gower Woodseer and Madge Winch, the thought of his first act

of penance done, without his feeling the poorer for it, reconciled Fleetwood to the aspect of the hollow place.

He could not stay beneath the roof. His task of breakfasting done, he was off before the morning's delivery of

letters, riding round the country under Croridge, soon up there again. And Henrietta might be at home, he was

reminded by hearing bandmusic as he followed the directions to the house named Stoneridge. The band

consisted of eight wind instruments; they played astonishingly well for itinerant musicians. By curious

chance, they were playing a selection from the Pirata; presently he heard the notes to "il mio tradito amor."

At the close of it he dismounted, flung the reins to his groom, and, addressing a compliment to the leader,

was deferentially saluted with a "my lord." Henrietta stood at the window, a servant held the door open for

him to enter; he went in, and the beautiful young woman welcomed him: "Oh, my dear lord, you have given

me such true delight! How very generous of you!" He protested ignorance. She had seen him speak to the

conductor and receive the patron's homage; and who but he knew her adored of operas, or would have had the

benevolent impulse to think of solacing her exile from music in the manner so sure of her taste! She was at

her loveliest: her features were one sweet bloom, as of the sunny flower garden; and, touched to the heart by

the music and the kindness, she looked the look that kisses; innocently, he felt, feeling himself on the same

good ground while he could own he admired the honey creature, much as an amateur may admire one of the

He shrugged, as the modest man should, who says: "If it depends on me"; but the words were firmly spoken

"Janey is with her brother down at Lekkatts. Things are at a deadlock. A spice of danger, enough to relieve

the dulness; and where there is danger Janey's at home." Henrietta mimicked her Janey. "Parades with her

brother at night; old military cap on her head; firearms primed; sings her Austrian mountain songs or the

Light Cavalry call, till it rings all day in my earsshe has a thrilling contralto. You are not to think her wild,

my lord. She's for adventure or domesticity, `whichever the Fates decree.' She really is coming to the perfect

Henrietta sketched apologies, with a sidled head, soft pout, wavy hand. "He belongs to the order of primitive

people. His wifethe same pattern, one supposespledged them to their Christian names. The man is a

simpleton, but a gentleman; and Janey holds his dying wife's wish sacred. We are all indebted to him."

The fair young woman's warm nature flew out to him on a sparkle of grateful tenderness in return for his

magnanimity, oblivious of the inflamer it was: and her heart thanked him more warmly, without the perilous

She was beautiful, she was tempting, and probably the weakest of players in the ancient game of two; and

clearly she was not disposed to the outlaw game; was only a creature of ardour. That he could see, seeing the

misinterpretation a fellow like Brailstone would put upon a temporary flush of the feminine, and the

advantage he would take of it, perhaps not unsuccessfullythe dog! He committed the absurdity of casting a

mental imprecation at the cunning tricksters of emotional women, and yelled at himself in the worn old

surplice of the converted rake. But letting his mind run this way, the tradito amor of the band outside the

lady's window was instantly traced to Lord Brailstone; so conflictingly, that he now became a very counsel

Henrietta prepared to conduct him to Lekkatts; her bonnet was brought. She drew forth a letter from a silken

Livia and her boyish lord were abandoned on the spot, though Henrietta could have affirmed stoutly that

there was much to be pleaded, if a female advocate dared it, and a man would but hear.

"Oh yes, and here we have a book of Travels in Spain," she said. "Everything Spanish for Janey now. You are

"Janey's latest idea; only she would have conceived the notion. You solve our puzzle, my lord."

She renewed the thanks she persisted in offering for the military music now just ceasing: vexatiously,

considering that it was bad policy for him to be unmasking Brailstone to her. At the same time, the blindness

which rendered her unconscious of Brailstone's hand in sending members of a military band to play selections

from the favourite opera they had jointly drunk of to ecstasy, was creditable; touching when one thought of

the pursuer's many devices, not omitting some treason on the part of her present friend.

"Yes, I hope soon our way down," she made answer. "I want you to see the pair of lovebirds in a nest."

The boy and girl were seen lying side by side, both fast asleep; fairhaired girl, darkhaired boy, faced to one

"Very imperiousMr. Boy!" she replied, straightening her back under a pretty frown, to convey the humour

The father's mind ran swiftly on a comparison of the destinies of the two children, from his estimate of their

parents; many of Gower Woodseer's dicta converging to reawaken thoughts upon Nature's laws, which a

knowledge of his own nature blackened. He had to persuade himself that this child of his was issue of a

loving union; he had to do it violently, conjuring a vivid picture of the mother in bud, and his recognition of

her young charm; the pain of keeping to his resolve to quit her, lest she should subjugate him and despoil him

of his wrath; the fatalism in his coming and going; the romantic freak it had been,a situation then so clearly

wrought, now blurred past comprehension. But there must have been love, or some love on his part.

Otherwise he was bound to pray for the mother to predominate in the child, all but excluding its father.

For if we are human creatures with consciences, nothing is more certain than that we make our taskmasters of

those to whom we have done a wrong, the philosopher says. Between Lord Feltre and Gower Woodseer,

influenced pretty equally by each of them, this young nobleman was wakening to the claims of others

Youth's infant conscience. Fleetwood now conceived the verbal supplication for his wife's forgiveness

involved in the act of penance; and verbal meant abject; with him, going so far, it would mean naked, precise,

no slurring? That he knew, and a tremor went over him. Women, then, are really the half of the world in

power as much as in their number, if men pretend to a step above the savage. Or, well, his wife was a power.

He had forgotten the puzzle spoken of by Henrietta, when she used the word again and expressed her

"You are aware, my dear lord, Janey worships her brother. He was defeated, by some dastardly contrivance,

in a wager to do wonderful featsfor money! money! money! a large stake. How we come off our high

horses! I hadn't an idea of money before I was married. I think of little else. My husband has notions of

honour; he engaged himself to pay a legacy of debts; his uncle would not pay debts long due to him. He was

reduced to the shift of wagering on his great strength and skill. He could have done it. His enemy

managedenemy there was! He had to sell out of the army in consequence. I shall never have Janey's face of

suffering away from my sight. He is a soldier above all things. It seems hard on me, but I cannot blame him

for snatching at an opportunity to win military distinction. He is in treaty for the post of aide to the

Colonelthe General of the English contingent bound for Spain, for the cause of the Queen. My husband

will undertake to be at the orders of his chief as soon as he can leave this place. Janey goes with him,

Passing through a turnstile, that led from the road across a meadowslope to the broken land below, Henrietta

had view of the earl's hard white face, and she hastened to say: "You have altered that, my lord. She is

devoted to her brother; and her brother running dangers, . . . and danger in itself is an attraction to her. But

her husband will have the first claim. She has her good sense. She will never insist on going, if you oppose.

Henrietta continued in the vein of these assurances; and Carinthia's character was shooting lightnings through

him, withering that of the woman who referred to his wife's good sense and her station; and certainly would

not have betrayed herself by such drawlings if she had been very positive that Carinthia's disposition toward

wealth and luxury resembled hers. She knew the reverse; or so his contemptuously generous effort to frame

an apology for the stuff he was hearing considered it. His wife was lost to him. That fact smote on his breast

Wildest of enterprises! But a criminal saw himself guilty of a large part in the disaster the two heroical souls

were striving desperately to repair. If her Chillon went, Carinthia would gosure as flame is drawn to air.

The exceeding splendour in the character of a young woman, injured as she had been, soft to love, as he knew

her, and giving her husband no other rival than a beloved brother, no ground of complaint save her devotion

to her brother, pervaded him, without illuminating or lifting; rather with an indication of a foul contrast, that

Half of our funny heathen lives we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away! was one of the

numbers of apposite sayings that hummed about him, for a chorus of the world's old wisdom in derision,

when he descended the heathy path and had sight of Carinthia beside her Chillon. Would it be the same thing

if he had it in hand again? Did he wish it to be the same? Was not he another man? By the leap of his heart to

the woman standing down there, he was a better man! But recent spiritual exercises brought him to see

superstitiously how by that sign she was lost to him; for everlastingly in this life the better pays for the worse;

Both Chillon and Carinthia, it is probable, might have been stirred to deeper than compassion, had the proud

young nobleman taken them into his breast to the scouring of it; exposing the grounds of his former brutality,

his gradual enlightenment, his ultimate acknowledgment of the pricelessness of the woman he had won to

lose her. An imploring of forgiveness would not have been necessary with those two, however great

theiror the woman'sastonishment at the revelation of an abysmal male humanity. A complete exposure

of past meanness is the deed of present courage certain of its reward without as well as within; for then we

show our fellows that the slough is cast. But life is a continuous fight; and members of the social world

display its degree of civilisation by fighting in armour; most of them are born in it; and their armour is more

sensitive than their skins. It was Fleetwood's instinct of his inability to fling it off utterly which warned him

of his loss of the wife, whose enthusiasm to wait on her brother in danger might have subsided into the

channel of duty, even tenderness, had he been able resolutely to strip himself bare. This was the further

impossible to him, because of a belief he now imposed upon himself, to cover the cowardly shrinking from so

extreme a penitential act, that such confessions are due from men to the priest only, and that he could confess

wholly and absolutely to the priestto heaven, therefore, under seal, and in safety, but with perfect

So, compelled to keep his inner self unknown, he fronted Chillon; courteously, in the somewhat lofty

seeming of a guarded manner, he requested audience for a few minutes; observing the princely figure of the

once hated man, and understanding Henrietta's sheer womanly choice of him; Carinthia's idolatry, too, as

Chillon said: "It concerns my sister, I have to think. In that case, her wish is to be present. Your lordship will

Fleetwood encountered Carinthia's eyes. They did not entreat or defy. They seconded her brother, and were a

civil shining naught on her husband. He bowed his head, constrained, feeling heavily the two to one.

She replied to the look: "My brother and I have a single mind. We save time by speaking three together, my

He was led into the long room of the workshop, where various patterns of muskets, rifles, pistols, and swords

were stars, crosses, wedges, over the walls, and a varnished wooden model of a piece of cannon occupied the

Contempt of military weapons and ridicule of the art of war were common in those days among a people

beginning to sit with habitual snugness at the festive board provided for them by the valour of their fathers.

Fleetwood had not been on the side of the banqueting citizens, though his country's journals and her feasted

popular wits made a powerful current to whelm opposition. But the appearance of the woman, his wife, here,

her head surrounded by destructive engines in the form of trophy, and the knowledge that this woman bearing

his name designed to be out at the heels of a foreign army or tagrag of uniformed rascals, inspired him to

reprobate men's bad old game as heartily as good sense does in the abstract, and as derisively as it is the way

with comfortable islanders before the midnight trumpetnotes of panic have tumbled them to their legs. He

He was the next moment taking Carinthia's impression of Chillon, compelled to it by an admiration that men

and women have alike for shapes of strength in the mould of grace, over whose firm build a flicker of agility

seems to run. For the young soldier's figure was visibly in its repose prompt to action as the mind's

movement. This was her brother; her enthusiasm for her brother was explained to him. No sooner did he have

the conception of it than it plucked at him painfully; and, feeling himself physically eclipsed by the object of

Carinthia's enthusiasm, his pride of the rival counselled him to preserve the mask on what was going on

within, lest it should be seen that he was also morally beaten at the outset. A trained observation told him,

moreover, that her Chillon's correctly handsome features, despite their conventional urbanity, could knit to

smite, and held less of the reserves of mercy behind them than Carinthia's glorious barbaric ruggedness. Her

eyes, each time she looked at her brother, had, without doting, the light as of the rise of happy tears to the

underlids: as they had on a certain day at the altar, when "my lord" was "my husband,"more shyly then. He

would have said, as beautifully, but for envy of the frank, pellucid worship in that look on her proved hero. It

was the jewel of all the earth to win back to himself; and it subjected him, through his desire for it, to a

measurement with her idol, in character, quality, strength, hardness. He heard the couple pronouncing

Why had she primed her brother to propose the council of three? Addressing them separately, he moult have

been his better or truer self. The sensation of the check imposed on him was instructive as to her craft and the

direction of her wishes. She preferred the bearing of hazards and horrors beside her brother, in scorn of the

advantages he could offer; and he yearned to her for despising by comparison the bribe he proposed in the

hope that he might win her to him. She was with religion to let him know the meanness of wealth.

Thus, at the edge of the debate, or contest, the young lord's essential nobility disarmed him; and the revealing

of it, which would have appealed to Carinthia and Chillon both, was forbidden by its constituent pride, which

CARINTHIA was pleased by hearing Lord Fleetwood say to her: "Your Madge and my Gower are waiting to

She said: "I respect him so much for his choice of Madge. They shall not wait, if I am to decide."

The blow that struck was not intended, and Fleetwood passed it, under her brother's judicial eye. Any small

"My lawyers will send down the settlement on her, to be read to them today or tomorrow. With the interest

on that and the sum he tells me he has in the Funds, they keep the wolf from the doora cottage door. They

have their cottage. There's an old song of love in a cottage. His liking for it makes him seem wiser than his

"They have a good friend to them in you, my lord. It will not be poverty for their simple wants. I hear of the

little cottage in Surrey where they are to lodge at first, before they take one of their own."

"Yes, my lord. I am learning to nurse the wounded, with the surgeon to direct me."

The earl addressed Chillon. "Your project of a Spanish expedition reminds me of favourable reports of your

Fleetwood glanced: she was collected and attentive. "I hear from Mrs. Levellier that Carinthia would like to

"In the event of accidents, the responsibility for having persuaded her would rest on you."

"My brother has not persuaded me," Carinthia's bell tones intervened. "I proposed it. The persuasion was

"Lady Fleetwood, I am entitled to think that your brother yielded to a request urged in ignorance of the nature

"My brother does not yield to a request without examining it all round, my lord, and I do not. I know the

risks. An evil that we should not endure,life may go. There can be no fear for me."

She spoke plain truth. The soul of this woman came out in its radiance to subdue him, as her visage

sometimes did; and her voice enlarged her words. She was a warrior woman, Life her sword, Death her

target, never to be put to shame, unconquerable. No such symbolical image smote him, but he had an

impression, the prose of it. As in the scene of the miners' cottages, her lord could have knelt to her; and for an

unprotesting longer space now. He choked a sigh, shrugged, and said, in the world's patient manner with mad

people: "You have set your mind on it; you see it rosecoloured. You would not fear, no, but your friends

would have good reason to fear. It's a menagerie in revolt over there. It is not really the place for you.

Laughter of spite at a remark either silly or slyly defiant was checked in Fleetwood by the horror of the

feeling that she had gone, was ankledeep in bloody mire, captive, prey of a rabble soldiery, meditating the

He said to Chillon: "Pardon me, war is a detestable game. Women in the thick of it add a touch to the brutal

Chillon said: "We are all of that opinion. Men have to play the game; women serving in hospital make it

For safety is nowhere to be had. But the earl pleaded: "At least in our country."

After a burning half minute the earl said: "I have to hear it from you, Mr. Levellier. You see me here."

That was handsomely spoken. But Lord Fleetwood had been judged and put aside. His opening of an old case

to hint at repentance for brutality annoyed the man who had let him go scathless for a sister's sake.

"One has to listen at times to what old sailors call Caribbee!" Chillon exclaimed impatiently, half aloud. "My

sister received your title; she has to support it. She did not receive the treatment of a wife:or lady, or

woman, or domestic animal. The bond is broken, as far as it bears on her subjection. She holds to the rite,

thinks it sacred. You can be at rest as to her behaviour. In other respects, your lordship does not exist for her."

"I have my freedom, and am thankful for it, to follow my brother, to share his dangers with him. That is more

Her eyes were on a man that she had put from her peaceably; and she replied, with sweetness in his ears, with

shocks to a sinking heart, "My lord, you may learn to be a gentle father to the child. I pray you may. My

brother and I will go. If it is death for us, I pray my child may have his father, and God directing his father."

"Yes, I hopeif it be the worst happening, I pray, too," said he, and drooped and brightened desperately:

"But you, too, Carinthia, you could aid by staying, by being with the boy and me. Carinthia!" he clasped her

name, the vapour left to him of her: "I have learntlearnt what I am, what you are; I have to climb a height

to win back the wife I threw away. She was unknown to me; I to myself nearly as much. I sent a warning of

the kind of husband for youa poor kind; I just knew myself well enough for that. You claimed my

wordthe blessing of my life, if I had known it! We were married; I playedI see the beast I played.

Money is power, they say. I see the means it is to damn the soul, unless weunless a man does what I do

Fleetwood stopped. He had never spoken such wordsarterial words, as they were, though the commonest;

and with moist brows, dry lips, he could have resumed, have said more, have taken this woman, this dream of

the former bride, the present stranger, into his chamber of the brave aims and sentenced deeds. Her brother in

the room was the barrier; and she sat mute, largeeyed, expressionless. He had plunged low in the man's

hearing; the air of his lungs was thick, hard to breathe, for shame of a degradation so extreme.

Chillon imagined him to be sighing. He had to listen further. "Soul" had been an uttered word. When the

dishonouring and mishandling brute of a young nobleman stuttered a compliment to Carinthia on her "faith in

God's assistance and the efficacy of prayer," he jumped to his legs, not to be shouting "Hound!" at him. He

said, under control: "God's name shall be left to the Church. My sister need not be further troubled. She has

shown she is not persuaded by me. Matters arranged here quickly,we start. If I am asked whether I think

she does wisely to run the risks in an insurrectionary country rather than remain at home exposed to the

honours and amusements your lordship offers, I think so; she is acting in her best interests. She has the choice

of being abroad with me or staying here unguarded by me. She has had her experience. She chooses rightly.

Paint the risks she runs, you lay the colours on those she escapes. She thanks the treatment she has undergone

for her freedom to choose. I am responsible for nothing but the not having stood against her most wretched

marriage. It might have been foreseen. Out there in the war she is protected. Here she is withI spare your

Fleetwood would have heard harsher had he not been Carinthia's husband. He withheld his reply. The

She gave him a smile in saying: "It shall be settled for a day after next week."

At the closing of the door on him, Chillon said: "He did send a message: I gathered itwithout the

wordsfrom our Uncle Griphard. I thought him in honour bound to youand it suited me that I should."

"I was a blindfold girl, dearest; no warning would have given me sight," said Carinthia. "That was my

treachery to the love of my brother. I dream of father and mother reproaching me."

The misery of her time in England had darkened her mind's picture of the early hour with Chillon on the

heights above the forsaken old home; and the enthusiasm of her renewed devotion to her brother giving it

again, as no light of a lost Eden, as the brilliant step she was taking with him from their morning Eastern Alps

to smokycrimson Pyrenees and Spanish sierras; she could imagine the cavernous interval her punishment

But simultaneously, the growing force of her mind's intelligence, wherein was no enthusiasm to misdirect by

overcolouring, enabled her to gather more than a suspicion of comparative feebleness in the man stripped of

his terrors. She penetrated the discrowned tyrant's nature some distance, deep enough to be quit of her

foregoing alarms. These, combined with his assured high style, had woven him the magical coat, threadbare

to quiet scrutiny. She matched him beside her brother. The dwarfed object was then observed; and it was not

for a woman to measure herself beside him. She came, however, of a powerful blood, and he was pressing her

back on her resources: without the measurement or a thought of it, she did that which is the most ordinary and

the least noticed of our daily acts in civilized intercourse, she subjected him to the trial of the elements

composing him, by collision with what she felt of her own; and it was because she felt them strongly, aware

of her feeling them, but unaware of any conflict, that the wrestle occurred. She flung him, pitied him, and

passed on along her path elsewhere. This can be done when love is gone. It is done more or less at any

meeting of men and men; and men and women who love not are perpetually doing it, unconsciously or

sensibly. Even in their love, a time for the trial arrives among certain of them; and the leadership is assumed,

and submission ensues, tacitly, nothing of the contention being spoken, perhaps nothing definitely known.

In Carinthia's case, her revived enthusiasm for her brother drove to the penetration of the husband pleading to

thwart its course. His offer was wealth: that is, luxury, amusement, ease. The subaudible "himself" into the

bargain was disregarded, not counting with one who was an upward rush of fire at the thought that she was

Chillon cordially believed the earl to be the pestilent half madman, junction with whom is a constant

trepidation for the wife, when it is not a screaming plight. He said so, and Carinthia let him retain his opinion.

She would have said it herself to support her scheme, though "mad" applied to a man moving in the world

With Henrietta for the earl's advocate, she was patient as the deaf rockwall enthusiasm can be against

entreaties to change its direction or bid it disperse. The "private band of picked musicians" at the disposal of

the Countess of Fleetwood, and Opera singers (Henrietta mentioned resonant names) hired for wonderful

nights at Esslemont and Calesford or on board the earl's beautiful schooner yacht, were no temptation. Nor

did Henrietta's allusions to his broken appearance move his wife, except in her saying regretfully: "He

On the hall table at Esslemont, a letter from his bankers informed the earl of a considerable sum of money

paid in to his account in the name of Lord Brailstone. Chumley Potts, hanging at him like a dog without a

master since the death of his friend Ambrose, had journeyed down: "Anxious about you," he said. Anxious

about or attracted by the possessor of Ambrose Mallard's "clean sweeper," the silvermounted small pistol;

sight of which he begged to have; and he lengthened his jaw on hearing it was loaded. A loaded pistol, this

dark little one to the right of the earl's blottingpad and pens, had the look of a fearful link with his fallen

chaps and fishy hue. Potts maundered moralities upon "life," holding the thing in his hand, weighing it,

eyeing the muzzle. He "couldn't help thinking of what is going to happen to us after it all": and "Brosey

knows now!" was followed by a twitch of one cheek and the ejaculation: "Forever!" Fleetwood alive and

Ambrose dead were plucking the startled worldling to a peep over the verge into our abyss; and the young

lord's evident doing of the same commanded Chumley Potts' imitation of him under the cloud Ambrose had

He was recommended to see Lord Feltre, if he had a desire to be instructed on the subject of the mitigation of

our pains in the regions below. Potts affirmed that he meant to die a Protestant Christian. Thereupon, carrying

a leaden burden of unlaughed laughable stuff in his breast, and Chummy's concluding remark to speed him:

"Damn it, no, we'll stick to our religion!" Fleetwood strode off to his library, and with the names of the

Ixionides of his acquaintance ringing round his head, proceeded to strike one of them off the number

privileged at the moment to intrude on him. Others would follow; this one must be the first to go. He wrote

the famous letter to Lord Brailstone, which debarred the wily pursuer from any pretext to be running down

into Mrs. Levellier's neighbourhood, and also precluded the chance of his meeting the fair lady at Calesford.

With the brevity equivalent to the flick of a glove on the cheek, Lord Brailstone was given to understand by

Lord Fleetwood that relations were at an end between them. No explanation was added; a single sentence

executed the work, and in the third person. He did not once reflect on the outcry in the ear of London coming

The letter posted and flying, Lord Fleetwood was kinder to Chumley Potts; he had a friendly word for Gower

Woodseer; though both were heathens, after their diverse fashions, neither of them likely ever to set out upon

the grand old road of Rome: Lord Feltre's "Appian Way of the Saints and Comforters."

Chummy was pardoned when they separated at night for his reiterated allusions to the temptation of poor

Ambrose Mallard's conclusive little weapon lying on the library table within reach of a man's armchair: in its

case, and the case locked, yes, but easily opened, "provoking every damnable sort of mortal curiosity!" The

soundest men among us have their fits of the blues, Fleetwood was told. "Not wholesome!" Chummy shook

his head resolutely, and made himself comprehensibly mysterious. He meant well. He begged his old friend

to promise he would unload and keep it unloaded. "For I know the infernal worry you havedeuced deal

worse than a night's bad luck!" said he; and Fleetwood smiled sourly at the world's total ignorance of causes.

His wretchedness was due now to the fact that the aforetime huntress refused to be captured. He took a silver

cross from a tabledrawer and laid it on the pistolcase. "There, Chummy," he said; that was all; not

sermonizing or proselytizing. He was partly comprehended by Chumley Potts, fully a week later. The

unsuspecting fellow, soon to be dispatched in the suite of Brailstone, bore away an unwontedly affectionate

dismissal to his bed, and spoke some rather squeamish words himself, as he recollected with disgust when he

The Cross on the pistolcase may have conduced to Lord Fleetwood's thought, that his days among

unrepentant ephemeral Protestant sinners must have their immediate termination. These old friends were the

plagueinfected clothes he flung off his body. But the Cross where it lay, forbidding a movement of the hand

to that box, was authoritative to decree his passage through a present torture, by the agency of the hand he

held back from the solution of his perplexity, at the cost which his belief in the Eternal would pay. Henrietta

had mentioned her husband's defeat, by some dastardly contrivance. He had to communicate, for the

disburdening of his soul, not only that he was guilty, but the meanest of criminals, in being no more than half

guilty. His training told him of the contempt women entertain toward the midway or cripple sinner, when

they have no special desire to think him innocent. How write, or even how phrase his having merely breathed

in his ruffian's hearing the wish that he might hear of her husband's defeat! And with what object? Here, too,

a woman might, years hence, if not forgive, bend her head resignedly over the man's vile nature, supposing

strong passion his motive. But the name for the actual motive? It would not bear writing, or any phrasing

round it. An unsceptred despot bidden take a fair woman's eyes into his breast, saw and shrank. And now the

eyes were Carinthia's: he saw a savage bridegroom, and a black ladderclimber and the sweetest of pardoning

brides, and the devil in him still insatiate for revenge upon her who held him to his word.

He wrote, read, tore the page, trimmed the lamp, and wrote again. He remembered Gower Woodseer's having

warned him he would finish his career a monk. Not, like Feltre, an oily convert, but under the hood, yes, and

extracting a chartreuse from his ramble through woods richer far than the philosopher's milk of Mother

Nature's bosom. There flamed the burning signal of release from his torments; there his absolving refuge,

instead of his writing fruitless, intricate, impossible stuff to a woman. The letter was renounced and shredded:

the dedicated ascetic contemplated a hooded shape, washed of every earthly fleck. It proved how men may by

THE DAME is at her thumps for attention to be called to "the strangeness of it," that a poor, small, sparse

village, hardly above a hamlet, on the most unproductive of Kentish heights, part of old forest land, should at

this period become "the cynosure of a city beautifully named by the poet Great Augusta, and truly indeed the

Put aside her artful pother to rouse excitement at stages of a narrative, London's general eye upon little

Croridge was but another instance of the extraordinary and not so wonderful. Lady Arpington, equal to a

Parliament in herself, spoke of the place and the countess courted by her repentant lord. Brailstone and

Chumley Potts were town criers of the executioner letter each had received from the earl; Potts with his

chatter of a suicide's pistol kept loaded in a case under a twoinchlong silver Cross, and with sundry

dramatic taps on the forehead, dottings over the breast, an awful grimace of devoutness. There was no

mistaking him. The young nobleman of the millions was watched; the town spyglass had him in its orbit.

Tales of the ancestral Fleetwoods ran beside rumours of a Papist priest at the bedside of the Foredoomed to

Error's dying mother. His wealth was counted, multiplied by the ready naughts of those who know little and

dread much. Sir Meeson Corby referred to an argument Lord Fleetwood had held on an occasion hotly

against the logical consistency of the Protestant faith; and to his alarm lest some day "all that immense

amount of money should slip away from us to favour the machinations of Roman Catholicism!" The

Countess of Cressett, Livia, anticipated her no surprise at anything Lord Fleetwood might do: she knew him.

So thereupon, with the whirr of a covey on wing before the fowler, our crested three of immemorial antiquity

and a presumptive immortality, the Ladies Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry, shot up again, hooting across the

dormant chief city Old England's fell word of the scarlet shimmer above the nether pitflames, Rome. An

ancient horror in the blood of the population, conceiving the word to signify, beak, fang, and claw, the

fiendish ancient enemy of the roasting day of yore, heard and echoed. Sleepless at the work of the sapper, in

preparation for the tiger's leap, Rome is keen to spy the foothold of English stability, and her clasp of a pillar

The coupling of Rome and England's wealthiest nobleman struck a match to terrorize the Fire Insurance of

Smithfield. That meteoric, intractable, perhaps wicked, but popular, reputedly clever, manifestly evilstarred,

enormously wealthy, young Earl of Fleetwood, wedded to an adventuress, and a target for the scandals

emanating from the woman, was daily, without omission of a day, seen walking Piccadilly pavement in

company once more with the pervert, the Jesuit agent, that crafty Catesby of a Lord Feltre, arm in arm the

pair of them, and uninterruptedly conversing, utterly unlike Englishmen. Mr. Rose Mackrell passed them, and

his breezy salutation of the earl was unobserved in my lord's vacant glass optics, as he sketched the scene.

London had reports of the sinister tempter and the imperilled young probationer undisguisedly entering the

Roman Catholic chapel of a fashionable districtchapel erected on pervert's legacies, down a small street at

the corner of a grandee square, by tolerance or connivance of our constabulary, entering it linked; and

linked they issued, their heads bent; for the operation of the tonsure, you would say. Two English noblemen!

But is there no legislation to stop the disease? Our female government asks it vixenly of our impotent male;

which pretends, beneath an air of sympathy, that we should abstain from any compulsory action upon the law

to interfere, though the situation is confessedly grave; and the aspect men assume is correspondingly, to the

last degree provokingly, gravehalf alive that they are, or void of patriotism, or Babylonian at heart!

Lord Fleetwood's yet undocked old associates vowed he "smelt strong" of the fumes of the whirled silver

censerballs. His disfavour had caused a stoppage of supplies, causing vociferous abomination of their

successful rivals, the Romish priests. Captain Abrane sniffed, loud as a horse, condemnatory as a cat, in

speaking of him. He said: "By George, it comes to this; we shall have to turn Catholics for a loan!"

Watchdogs of the three repeated the gigantic gambler's melancholy roar. And, see what gap, cried the

ratiocination of alarm, see the landslip it is in our body, national and religious, when exalted personages go

As you and the world have reflected in your sager moods, an ordinary pebble may roll where it likes, for

individualism of the multitudinously obscure little affects us. Not so the costly jewel, which is a congregation

of ourselves, in our envies and longings and genuflexions thick about its lustres. The lapses of precious things

must needs carry us, both by weight and example, and it will ceaselessly be, that we are possessed by the

treasure we possess, we hang on it. A still, small voice of England's mind under panic sent up these truisms

containing admonitions to the governing Ladies. They, the most conservative of earthly bodies, clamoured in

return, like cloud scud witches that have caught fire at their skirts from the torches of marshfire radicals.

They cited for his arrest the titled millionaire who made a slide for the idiots of the kingdom; they

stigmatized our liberty as a sophistry, unless we have in it the sustaining element of justice;and where is

the justice that punishes his country for any fatal course a mad young Cr*sus may take! They shackled the

hands of testators, who endangered the salvation of coroneted boys by having sanction to bequeath vast

wealth in bulk. They said, in truth, that it was the liberty to be unChristian. Finally, they screeched a

petitioning of Parliament to devote a night to a sitting, and empower the Lord Chancellor to lay an embargo

on the personal as well as the real estate of wealthy perverts; in common prudence depriving Rome of the

The three guardian ladies and their strings of followers headed over the fevered and benighted town, as the

records of the period attest, windpiping these and similar Solan notes from the undigested cropful of alarms

Lord Fleetwood's expected conduct crammed into them. They and all the world traced his present madness to

the act foregoing: that marriage! They reviewed it to deplore it, every known incident and the numbers

imagined; yet merely to deplore: frightful comparisons of then with now rendered the historical shock to the

marriage market matter for a sick smile. Evil genius of some sort beside him the wealthy young nobleman is

sure to have. He has got rid of one to take up with a viler. First, a sluttish trollop of German origin is foisted

on him for life; next, he is misled to abjure the faith of his fathers for Rome. But patently, desperation in the

husband of such a wife weakened his resistance to the Roman Catholic pervert's insinuations. There we

And upon that, suddenly comes a cyclonic gust; and gossip twirls, whines, and falls to the twanging of an

entirely new set of notes, that furnish a tolerably agreeable tune, on the whole. O hear! The Marchioness of

Arpington proclaims not merely acquaintanceship with Lord Fleetwood's countess, she professes esteem for

the young person. She has been heard to say, that if the Principality of Wales were not a royal title, a dignity

of the kind would be conferred by the people of those mountains on the Countess of Fleetwood: such

unbounded enthusiasm there was for her character when she sojourned down there. As it is, they do speak of

her in their Welsh by some title. Their bards are offered prizes to celebrate her deeds. You remember the

regiment of mounted Welsh gentlemen escorting her to her Kentish seat, with their band of the threestringed

harps! She is wellborn, educated, handsome, a perfectly honest woman, and a sound Protestant. Quite the

reverse of Lord Fleetwood's seeking to escape her, it is she who flies; she cannot forgive him his cruelties and

infidelities; and that is the reason why he threatens to commit the act of despair. Only she can save him! She

has flown for refuge to her uncle, Lord Levellier's house at a place named Croridgenot in the

gazetteerhard of access and a home of poachers, where shooting goes on hourly; but most picturesque and

romantic, as she herself is! Lady Arpington found her there, nursing one of the wounded, and her uncle on his

deathbed; obdurate all round against her husband, but pensive when supplicated to consider her country

endangered by Rome. She is a fervent patriot. The tales of her Whitechapel origin, and heading mobs

wielding bludgeons, are absolutely false, traceable to scandalizing anecdotists like Mr. Rose Mackrell. She is

the beautiful example of an injured wife doing honour to her sex in the punishment of a faithless husband, yet

so little cherishing her natural right to deal him retribution, that we dare hope she will listen to her patriotic

duty in consenting to the reconcilement, which is Lord Fleetwood's alternative:his wife or Rome! They say

she has an incommunicable charm, accounting for the price he puts on her now she holds aloof and he misses

it. Let her but rescue him from England's most vigilant of her deadly enemies, she will be entitled to the

nation's lasting gratitude. She has her opportunity for winning the Anglican English, as formerly she won the

Dissenter Welsh. She may yet be the means of leading back the latter to our fold.

A notation of the cries in air at a time of surgent public excitement can hardly yield us music; and the

wording of them, by the aid of compounds and transplants, metaphors and similes only just within range of

the arrows of Phoebus' bow (i.e. the farthest flight known), would, while it might imitate the latent poetry,

expose venturesome writers to the wrath of a people commendably believing their language a perfected

instrument when they prefer the request for a plateful, and commissioning their literary police to brain

audacious experimenters who enlarge or wing it beyond the downright aim at that mark. The gossip of the

time must therefore appear commonplace, in resemblance to the panting ventre � terre of the toad, instead of

the fiery steed's; although we have documentary evidence that our country's heart was moved;"in no

common degree," Dr. Glossop's lucid English has it, at the head of a broadsheet ballad discovered by him;

wherein the connubially inclined young earl and the nation in turn beseech the countess to resume her place

at Esslemont, and so save both from a terrific dragon's jaw, scarlet as the infernal flames; described as

These ballads, burlesque to present reading, mainly intended for burlesque by the wits who dogged without

much enlivening an anxious period of our history, when cornerstones were falling the way the young lord of

the millions threatened to go, did, there is little doubt, according to another part of their design (Rose

Mackrell boasts it indirectly in his Memoirs), interpret public opinion, that is, the English humour of itthe

Carinthia had a study of the humours of English character in the person of the wounded man she nursed on

little Croridge, imagining it the most unobserved of English homes, and herself as unimportant an object.

Daniel Charner took his wound, as he took his medicine and his posset from her hand, kindly, and seemed to

have a charitable understanding of Lord Levellier now that the old nobleman had driven a pellet of lead into

him and laid him flat. It pleased him to assure her that his mates were men of their word, and had promised to

pay the old lord with "a rouse" for it, nothing worse. Her father used to speak of the "clean hearts of the

English" as to the husbanding of revenge; that is, the "no spot of bad blood" to vitiate them. Captain John

Peter seconded all goodhumoured fighters "for the long account": they will surely win; and it was one of his

Recalling the scene of her bridal daythe two strong Englishmen at the shake of hands, that had spoiled one

another's faces, she was enlightened with a comprehension of her father's love for the people; seeing the

spiritual of the gross ugly picture, as not every man can do, and but a warrior Joan among women. Chillon

shall teach the Spanish people English heartiness, she thought. Lord Fleetwood's remarks on the expedition

would have sufficed to stamp it righteous with her; that was her logic of the low valuation of him. She

fancied herself absolutely released at his departure. Neither her sister Riette nor her friend Owain,

administering sentiment and common sense to her by turns, could conceive how the passion for the recovery

of her brother's military name fed the hope that she might aid in it, how the hope fed the passion. She had

besides her hunger to be at the work she could do; her Chillon's glory for morning sky above it.

Such was the mind Lady Arpington brought the world's wisdom to bear upon; deeming it in the end female

only in its wildness and obstinacy. Carinthia's answers were few, barely varied. Her repetition of "my

brother" irritated the great lady, whose argument was directed to make her see that these duties toward her

brother were primarily owing to her husband, the man she would reclaim and could guide. And the Countess

of Fleetwood's position, her duty to society, her dispensing of splendid hospitality, the strengthening of her

husband to do his duty to the nation, the saving of him from a fatal stepfrom Rome; these were

considerations for a reasonable woman to weigh before she threw up all to be off on the maddest of

adventures. "Inconceivable, mar dear child!" Lady Arpington proceeded until she heard herself as droning.

Carinthia's unmoved aspect of courteous attention appeared to invoke the prolongation of the sermon it

criticized. It had an air of reversing their positions while she listened to the charge of folly, and incidentally

Her reason for not fearing Roman Catholic encroachments was, she said, her having known good Catholics in

the country she came from. For herself, she should die professing the faith of her father and mother. Behind

her correct demeanour a rustic intelligence was exhibited. She appreciated her duty to her marriage oath: "My

husband's honour is quite safe with me." Neither England nor religion, nor woman's proper devotion to a

husband's temporal and spiritual welfare, had claims rivalling her devotion to her brother. She could not

explain a devotion that instigated her to an insensate course. It seemed a kind of enthusiasm; and it was

coldly spoken; in the tone referring to "her husband's honour." Her brother's enterprise had her approval

because "her mother's prayer was for him to serve in the English army." By running over to take a side in a

Spanish squabble? she was asked and answered: "He will learn war; my Chillon will show his value; he will

"I cannot take a step forward without counting on success. We know the chances we are to meet. My father

has written of death. We do not fear it, so it is nothing to us. We shall go together; we shall not have to weep

The strange young woman's avoidance of any popular sniffle of the pathetic had a recognized merit.

"Tell me," Lady Arpington said abruptly; "this maid of yours, who is to marry the secretary, or whatever he

"She is my dear servant Madge." A cloud opened as Carinthia spoke the name. "She will be a true wife to

Nothing against the earl in that direction, apparently; unless his countess was blest with the density of

Society's emissary sketched its perils for unprotected beautiful woman; an outline of the London quadrille

Henrietta danced in; and she glanced at Carinthia and asked: "Have you thought of it?"

Carinthia's eyes were on the great lady's. Their meaning was, "You hit my chief thought." They were read as

her farthest thought. For the hint of Henrietta's weakness deadened her feelings with a reminder of warm and

continued solicitations rebutted; the beautiful creature's tortures at the idea of her exile from England. An

outwearied hopelessness expressed a passive sentiment very like indifference in the clear wide gaze. She

replied: "I have. My proposal to her was Cadiz, with both our young ones. She will not."

And there is an end to that part of the question! Lady Arpington interpreted it, by the gaze more than the

words, under subjection of the young woman's character. Nevertheless, she bore away Carinthia's consent to a

final meeting with the earl at her house in London, as soon as things were settled at Croridge. Chillon, whom

she saw, was just as hard, unforgiving, careless of his country's dearest interests; brother and sister were one

heart of their one blood. She mentioned the general impression in town, that the countess and only she could

save the earl from Rome. A flash of polite laughter was Chillon's response. But after her inspection of the

elegant athlete, she did fancy it possible for a young wife, even for Henrietta, to bear his name proudly in his

absenceif that was worth a moment's consideration beside the serious issues involved in her appeal to the

countess; especially when the suggestion regarding young wives left unprotected, delicately conveyed to the

husband, had failed of its purpose. The handsome husband's brows fluttered an interrogation, as if her

clearobscure should be further lighted; and it could not be done. He weighed the wife by the measure of the

sister, perhaps; or his military head had no room for either. His callousness to the danger of his country's

disintegration, from the incessant, becoming overt, attacks of a foreign priesthood mightan indignant great

lady's precipitation to prophecy said wouldbring chastisement on him. She said it, and she liked Henrietta,

vowing to defeat her forecast as well as she could in a land seeming forsaken by stable principles; its nobles

breaking up its national church, going over to Rome, embracing the faith of the impostor Mahomet.

Gossip fed to the starvation bone of Lady Arpington's report, until one late afternoon, memorable for the

breeding heat in the van of elemental artillery, newsboys waved damp sheets of fresh print through the

streets, and society's guardians were brought to confess, in shame and gladness, that they had been growing

sceptical of the active assistance of Providence. At first the "Terrible explosion of gunpowder at Croridge"

alarmed them lest the timely Power should have done too much. A day later the general agitation was

pacified; Lady Arpington circulated the word "safe," and the World knew the disaster had not engulphed

Lady Fleetwood's valuable life. She had the news by word of mouth from the lovely Mrs. KirbyLevellier,

sister inlaw to the countess. We are convinced we have proof of Providence intervening when some terrific

event of the number at its disposal accomplishes the thing and no more than the thing desired. Pitiful though

it may seem for a miserly old lord to be blown up in his bed, it is necessarily a subject of congratulation if the

life, or poor remnant of a life, sacrificed was an impediment to our righteous wishes. But this is a theme for

the Dame, who would full surely have committed another breach of the treaty, had there not been allusion to

On the day preceding the catastrophe, Chillon's men returned to work. He and Carinthia and Mr. Wythan

lunched with Henrietta at Stoneridge. Walking down to Lekkatts, they were astounded to see the figure of the

spectral old lord on the plank to the powder store, clad in his long black cloak, erect. He was crossing, he told

them, to count his barrels; a dream had disturbed him. Chillon fell to rapid talk upon various points of

business, and dispersed Lord Levellier's memory relating to his errand. Leaning on Carinthia's arm, he went

back to the house, where he was put to bed in peace of mind. His resuscitated physical vigour blocked all

speculation for the young people assembled at Stoneridge that night. They hardly spoke; they strangled

thoughts forming as larv� of wishes. Henrietta would be away to Lady Arpington's next day, Mr. Wythan to

Wales. The two voyagers were sadder by sympathy than the two whom they were leaving to the clock's round

of desert sameness. About ten at night Chillon and Mr. Wythan escorted Carinthia, for the night's watch

beside her uncle, down to Lekkatts. It was midway that the knocks on air, as of a muffled mallet at a door and

After an instant of the silence following a shock, Carinthia touched her brother's arm; and Chillon said: "Not

They ran till they had Lekkatts in sight. A half moon showed the house; it stood. Fifty paces below, a column

of opal smoke had begun to wreathe and stretch a languid flag. The "rouse" promised to Lord Levellier by

Daniel Charner's humorous mates had hit beyond its aim. Intended to give him a startor "One er in

Carinthia entered his room and saw that he was lying stretched restfully. She whispered of this to Chillon,

and began upon her watch, reading her Spanish phrasebook; and she could have wept, if she had been a

woman for tears. Her duty to stay in England with Chillon's fair wife crossed the beckoning pages like a

black smoke. Her passion to go and share her brother's dangers left the question of its righteousness at each

Her uncle's grey head on his pillow was like a flintstone in chalk under her look by light of dawn; the chin

THUS a round and a good old English practical repartee, worthy a place in England's book of her historical

popular jests; conceived ingeniously, no bit murderously, even humanely, if Englishmen are to be allowed

indulgence of a jolly hit back for an injurymore a feint than a real strokegave the miserly veteran his

Lord Levellier dead of the joke detracted from the funny idea there had been in the anticipation of his hearing

the libertine explosion of his grand new powder, and coming out cloaked to see what walls remained upright.

Its cleverness, however, was magnified by the shades into which it had dispatched him. The man who started

the "rouse for old Griphard" was named: nor did he shuffle his honours off. Chillon accused him, and he

regretfully grinned; he would have owned to it eloquently, excited by the extreme ingenuity, but humour at

the criminal bar is an abject thing, that has to borrow from metaphysics for the expository words. He lacked

them entirely, and as he could not, fronting his master, supply the defect with oaths, he drew up and let out on

the dead old lord, who wanted a few pounds of blasting powder, like anything else in everybody's way.

Chillon expected the lowest of his countrymen to show some degree of chivalry upon occasions like the

present. He was too young to perceive how it is, that a block of our speech in the needed direction drives it

storming in another, not the one closely expressing us. Carinthia liked the man; she was grieved to hear of his

having got the sack summarily, when he might have had a further month of service or a month's pay. Had not

the workmen's forbearance been much tried? And they had not stolen, they had bought the powder, only

She touched her brother's native sense of fairness and vexed him with his cowardly devil of impatience,

which kicked at a simply stupid common man, and behaved to a lordly offender, smelling rascal, civilly. Just

as her father would have treated the matter, she said: "Are we sorry for what has happened, Chillon?" The

man had gone, the injustice was done; the master was left to reflect on the part played by his inheritance of

the half share of ninety thousand pounds in his proper respect for Lord Levellier's memory. Harsh to an

inferior is a horrible charge. But the position of debtor to a titled cur brings a worse for endurance. Knowing

a part of Lord Fleetwood's message to Lord Levellier suppressed, the bride's brother, her chief guardian, had

treated the omission as of no importance, and had all the while understood that he ought to give her his full

guess at the reading of it: or so his racked mind understood it now. His old father had said: A dumb tongue

can be a heavy liar; and, Lies are usurers coin we pay for ten thousand per cent. His harshness in the past

hour to a workman who had suffered with him and had not intended serious mischief was Chillon's

unsounded motive for the resolution to be out of debt to the man he loathed. There is a Muse that smiles aloft

Carinthia heard her brother's fuller version of the earl's communication to her uncle before the wild day of her

marriage. "Not particularly fitted for the married state," Chillon phrased it, saying: "He seems to have known

himself, he was honest so far." She was advised to think it over, that the man was her husband.

She had her brother's heart in her breast, she could not misread him. She thought it over, and felt a slight drag

of compassion for the reluctant bridegroom. That was a stretch long leagues distant from love with her; the

sort of feeling one has for strange animals hurt; and she had in her childish blindness done him a hurt, and he

had bitten her. He was a weak young nobleman; he had wealth for a likeness of strength; he had no glory

about his head. Why had he not chosen a woman to sit beside him who would have fancied his coronet a

glory and his luxury a kindness? But the poor young nobleman did not choose! The sadly comic of his

keeping to the pledge of his wordhis real wifethe tyrant of the tyrantclothed him; the vision of him at

the altar, and on the coach, and at the Royal Sovereign Inn, and into the dimness where a placidly smiling

Suppose that her duty condemned her to stay in England on guard over Chillon's treasure! The perpetual

struggle with a weak young nobleman of aimless tempers and rightabout changes, pretending to the part of

husband, would, she foresaw, raise another figure of duty, enchaining a weak young woman. The world

supported his pretension; and her passion to serve as Chillon's comrade sank at a damping because it was

flame. Chillon had done that; Lady Arpington, to some extent; Henrietta more. A little incident, pointing in

no direction, had left a shadow of a cloud, consequent upon Lady Arpington's mention of Henrietta's

unprotectedness. Stepping up the hill to meet her sister, on the morning of Henrietta's departure for London

under convoy of Mr. Wythan, Carinthia's long sight spied Kit Ines, or a man like him, in the meadow

between Lekkatts and Croridge. He stood before Henrietta, and vanished lightlegged at a gesture. Henrietta

was descending to take her leave of her busied husband; her cheeks were flushed; she would not speak of the

fellow, except to reply, "oh, a beggar," and kept asking whether she ought not to stay at Stoneridge. And if

she did she would lose the last of the Opera in London! How could she help to investigate the cause of an

explosion so considerate to them? She sang snatches of melodies, clung to her husband, protested her

inability to leave him, and went, appearing torn away. As well bid healthy children lie abed on a bright

summer morning, as think of holding this fair young woman bound to the circle of safety when she has her

Suspicions were not of the brood Carinthia's bosom harboured. Suspicion of Chillon's wife Carinthia could

not feel. An uncaptained vessel in the winds on high seas was imagined without a picturing of it. The

apparition of Ines, if it was he, would not fit with any conjecture. She sent a warning to Madge, and at the

same time named the girl's wedding day for her; pained in doing it. She had given the dear girl her word that

she would be present at this of all marriages. But a day or two days or more would have to be spent away

from Chillon; and her hunger for every hour beside her brother confessed to the war going on within her, as

to which was her holier duty, the one on the line of her inclinations, or that one pointing to luxury choice

between a battlehorse and a cushionedchair; between companionship with her glorious brother facing

death, and submission to a weak young nobleman claiming his husband's rights over her. She had submitted,

had forgotten his icy strangeness, had thought him love; and hers was a breast for love, it was owned by the

sobbing rise of her breast at the thought. And she might submit againin honour? scorning the husband?

Chillon scorned him. Yet Chillon left the decision to her, specified his excuses. And Henrietta and Owain,

Lady Arpington, Gower Woodseer, all the worldCarinthia shuddered at the world's blank eye on what it

directs for the acquiescence of the woman. That shred of herself she would become, she felt herself becoming

it when the view of her career beside her brother waned. The dead Rebecca living in her heart was the only

But there came a turn where she and Rebecca separated. Rebecca's insurgent wishes taking shape of

prophecy, robbed her of her friend Owain, to present her an impossible object, that her mind could not

compass or figure. She bade Rebecca rest and let her keep the fancy of Owain as her good ghost of a sun in

the mist of a frosty morning; sweeter to her than an image of love, though it were the very love, the love of

maidens' dreams, bursting the bud of romance, issuing its flower. Delusive love drove away with a credulous

maiden, under an English heaven, on a coach and four, from a windy hilltop, to a crash below, and a

stunned recovery in the street of small shops, mud, rain, gloom, language like musketfire and the wailing

No regrets, her father had said; they unman the heart we want for tomorrow. She kept her look forward at

the dead wall Chillon had thrown up. He did not reject her company; his prospect of it had clouded; and there

were allusions to Henrietta's loneliness. "His Carin could do her service by staying, if she decided that way."

Her enthusiasm dropped to the level of life's common ground. With her sustainment gone, she beheld herself

a titled doll, and had sternly to shut her eyes on the behind scenes, bar any shadowy approaches of womanly

softness; thinking her father's daughter dishonoured in the submissive wife of the weak young nobleman

Madge and Gower came to Stoneridge on their road to London three days before their union. Madge had no

fear of Ines, but said: "I never let Mr. Gower out of my sight." Perforce of studying him with the thirsty

wonder consequent upon his proposal to her, she had got fast hold of the skirts of his character; she "knew he

was happy because he was always making her laugh at herself." Her manner of saying, "She hoped to give

him a comfortable home, so that he might never be sorry for what he had done," was toned as in a church,

beautiful to her mistress. Speaking of my lord's great kindness, her eyes yearned for a second and fell

humbly. She said of Kit Ines, "He's found a new `paytron,' Sarah says Mr. Woodseer tells her, my lady. It's

another nobleman, Lord Brailstone, has come into money lately and hired him for his pugilist when it's not

horseracing." Gower spoke of thanks to Lord Fleetwood for the independence allowing him to take a wife

and settle to work in his little Surrey home. He, too, showed he could have said more and was advised not to

push at a shut gate. My lord would attend their wedding as well as my lady, Carinthia heard from Madge;

counting it a pity that wealthy noblemen had no professions to hinder the doing of unprofitable things.

Her sensibility was warmer on the wedding day of these two dear ones. He graced the scene, she admitted,

when reassured by his perfect reserve toward her personally. He was the born nobleman in his friendliness

with the bridal pair and respectfulness to Mr. Woodseer. High social breeding is an exquisite performance on

the instrument we are, and his behaviour to her left her mind at liberty for appreciation of it. Condescension

was not seen, his voice had no false note. During the ceremony his eyelids blinked rapidly. At the close, he

congratulated the united couple, praising them each for the wisdom of their choice. He said to his countess:

"They are fortunate who have your prayers," he said, and turned to Sarah Winch. She was to let him know

when she also had found her "great philosopher." Sarah was like a fish on a bank, taking gasps at the marvel

of it all; she blushed the pale pink of her complexion, and murmured of "happiness." Gower had gone

headlong into happiness, where philosophers are smirkers and mouthers of ordinary stuff. His brightest

remark was to put the question to his father: "The three good things of the Isle of Britain?" and treble the

name of Madge Woodseer for a richer triad than the Glamorgan man could summon. Pardonably foolish; but

mindful of a past condition of indiscipline, Nature's philosopher said to the old minister: "Your example

saved me for this day at a turn of my road, sir." Nature's poor wild scholar paid that tribute to the regimental

sectarian. Enough for proud philosophy to have done the thing demonstrably right, Gower's look at his

Madge and the world said. That "European rose of the coalblack order," as one of his numerous pictures of

her painted the girl, was a torch in a cavern for dusky redness at her cheeks. Her responses beneath the book

Mr. Woodseer held open had flashed a distant scene through Lord Fleetwood. Quaint to notice was her

reverence for the husband she set on a towering monument, and her friendly, wifely, whispered jogs at the

unpractical creature's forgetfulness of his wraps, his books, his writingdeskon this tremendous occasion,

his pipe. Again the earl could have sworn, that despite her antecedents, she brought her husband honest

dower, as surely as she gave the lucky Pagan a whole heart; and had a remarkably fine bust to house the

organ, too; and a clarionet of a voice, curiously like her mistress's. And not a bad fellow, but a heathen dog, a

worshipper of Nature, walked off with the girl, whose voice had the ring of Carinthia's. The Powers do not

These two now one by united goodwill for the junction Lord Fleetwood himself drove through London to

the hills, where another carriage awaited them by his orders, in the town of London's racecourse. As soon as

they were seated he nodded to them curtly from his box, and drove back, leaving them puzzled. But his

countess had not so very coldly seen him start his horses to convey the modest bridal pair. His impulses to

kindness could be politic. Before quitting Whitechapel, she went with Sarah to look at the old shop of the

fruits and vegetables. They found it shut, untenanted; Mr. Woodseer told them that the earl was owner of it

by recent purchase, and would not lease it. He had to say why; for the countess was dull to the notion of a

sentimental desecration in the occupying of her bedchamber by poor tradespeople. She was little flattered.

The great nobleman of her imagination when she lay there dwindled to a whimsy infant, despot of his

nursery, capricious with his toys; likely to damage himself, if left to himself.

How it might occur, she heard hourly from her hostess, Lady Arpington; from Henrietta as well, in different

terms. He seemed to her no longer the stationed nobleman, but one of other idle men, and the saddest of

young men. His weakness cast a net on her. Worse than that drag of compassion, she foresaw the chance of

his having experience of her own weakness, if she was to be one among idle women: she might drop to the

love of him again. Chillon's damping of her enthusiasm sank her to a mere breathing body, miserably an

animal body, no comrade for a valiant brother; this young man's feeble consort, perhaps: and a creature

thirsting for pleasure, disposed to sigh in the prospect of caresses. Enthusiasm gone, her spirited imagination

She fell too low in her esteem to charge it upon Henrietta that she stood hesitating, leaning on the hated side

of the debate; though she could almost have blamed Chillon for refusing her his positive counsel, and not

ordering his wife to follow him. Once Lady Arpington, reasoning with her on behalf of the husband who

sought reconciliation, sneered at her brother's project, condemned it the more for his resolve to carry it out

now that he had means. The front of a shower sprang to Carinthia's eyelids. Now that her brother had means,

he from whom she might be divided was alert to keep his engagement and study war on the field, as his father

had done in foreign service, offering England a trained soldier, should his country subsequently need him.

The contrast of her heroic brother and a luxurious idle lord scattering blood of bird or stag, and despising the

soldier's profession, had a singular bitter effect, consequent on her scorn of words to defend the man her heart

The feminine trick was pardoned to her because her unaccustomed betrayal of that form of enervation was

desired. It was read as woman's act of selfpity over her perplexity: which is a melting act with the woman

when there is no man to be dissolved by it. So far Lady Arpington judged rightly; Carinthia's tears, shed at

the thought of her brother under the world's false judgement of him, left her spiritless to resist her husband's

advocates. Unusual as they were, almost unknown, they were thunderdrops and shook her.

All for the vivid surface, the Dame frets at stresses laid on undercurrents. There is no bridling her unless the

tale be here told of how Lord Brailstone in his frenzy of the disconcerted rival boasted over town the

counterstroke he had dealt Lord Fleetwood, by sending Mrs. Levellier a statement of the latter nobleman's

base plot to thwart her husband's wager, with his foul agent, the repentant and wellpaid ruffian in person, to

verify every written word. The town's conception of the necessity for the reunion of the earl and countess was

too intense to let exciting scandal prosper. Moreover, the town's bright anticipation of its concluding festivity

on the domain of Calesford argued such tattle down to a baffled adorer's malice. The Countess of Cressett,

having her cousin, the beautiful Mrs. KirbyLevellier, in her house, has denied Lord Brailstone admission at

her door, we can affirm. He has written to her vehemently, has called a second time, has vowed publicly that

Mrs. Levellier shall have her warning against Lord Fleetwood. The madness of jealousy was exhibited. Lady

Arpington pronounced him in his conduct unworthy the name of gentleman. And how foolish the scandal he

circulates! Lord Fleetwood's one aim is to persuade his offended wife to take her place beside him. He

expresses regret everywhere, that the death of her uncle Lord Levellier withholds her presence from

Calesford during her term of mourning; and that he has given his word for the f�te on a particular day, before

London runs quite dry. His pledge of his word is notoriously inviolate. The Countess of Cressettan

extraordinary instance of a thrice married woman corrected in her addiction to play by her alliance with a

rakish juveniledeclares she performs the part of hostess at the request of the Countess of Fleetwood.

Perfectly convincing. The more so (if you have the gossips' keen scent of a deduction) since Lord Fleetwood

and young Lord Cressett and the Jesuit Lord Feltre have been seen confabulating with very sacerdotal

countenances indeed. Three English noblemen! not counting eighty years for the whole three! And dear Lady

Cressett fears she may be called on to rescue her boyhusband from a worse enemy than the green tables, if

Lady Fleetwood should unhappily prove unyielding, as it shames the gentle sex to imagine she will be. In

fact, we know through Mrs. Levellier, the meeting of reconciliation between the earl and the countess comes

off at Lady Arpington's, by her express arrangement, tomorrow: "none too soon," the expectant world of

The meeting came to pass three days before the great day at Calesford. Carinthia and her lord were alone

together. This had been his burning wish at Croridge, where he could have poured his heart to her and might

have moved the wife's. But she had formed her estimate of him there: she had, in the comparison or clash of

forces with him, grown to contemplate the young man of wealth and rank, who had once been impatient of an

allusion to her father, and sought now to part her from her brotherstop her breathing of fresh air.

Sensationally, too, her ardour for the exercise of her inherited gifts attributed it to him that her father's

daughter had lived the mean existence in England, pursuing a husband, hounded by a mother's terrors. The

influences environing her and pressing her to submission sharpened her perusal of the small object largely

endowed by circumstances to demand it. She stood calmly discoursing, with a tempered smile: no longer a

novice in the social manner. An equal whom he had injured waited for his remarks, gave ready replies; and

he, bowing to the visible equality, chafed at a sense of inferiority following his acknowledgment of it. He was

alone with her, and next to dumb; she froze a full heart. As for his heart, it could not speak at all, it was a

swinging lump. The rational view of the situation was exposed to her; and she listened to that favourably, or

at least attentively; but with an edge to her civil smile when he hinted of entertainments, voyages, travels, an

excursion to her native mountain land. Her brother would then be facing death. The rational view, she

admitted, was one to be considered. Yes, they were married; they had a son; they were bound to sink

misunderstandings, in the interests of their little son. He ventured to say that the child was a link uniting

them; and she looked at him. He blinked rapidly, as she had seen him do of late, but kept his eyes on her

through the nervous flutter of the lids; his pride making a determined stand for physical mastery, though her

look was but a look. Had there been reproach in it, he would have found the voice to speak out. Her look was

a cold sky above a hungering man. She froze his heart from the marble of her own.

And because she was for adventuring with her brother at bloody work of civil war in the pay of a foreign

government! he found a short refuge in that mute sneer, and was hurled from it by an apparition of the

Welsh scene of the bitten infant, and Carinthia volunteering to do the bloody work which would have saved

it; which he had contested, ridiculed. Right then, her insanity now conjured the wretched figure of him

opposing the martyr her splendid humaneness had offered her to be, and dominated his reason, subjected him

to admireon to worship of the woman, whatever she might do. Just such a feeling for a woman he had

dreamed of in his younger time, doubting that he would ever meet the fleshly woman to impose it. His heart

broke the frost she breathed. Yet, if he gave way to the run of speech, he knew himself unmanned, and the

fatal habit of superiority stopped his tongue after he had uttered the name he loved to speak, as nearest to the

"Carinthiaso I think, as I said, we both see the common sense of the position. I regret over and over

againwe'll discuss all that when we meet after this Calesford affair. I shall have things to say. You will

overlook, I am surewell, men are men!or try to. Perhaps I'm not worse thanwe'll say, some. You will,

I know,I have learnt it,be of great service, help to me; double my value, I believe; more than double it.

You will receive mehere? Or at Croridge or Esslemont; and alone together, as now, I beg."

That was what he said. Having said it, his escape from high tragics in the comfortable worldly tone rejoiced

him; to some extent also the courteous audience she gave him. And her hand was not refused. Judging by her

aspect, the plain commonsense ground of their situation was accepted for the best opening step to their

union; though she must have had her feelings beneath it, and God knew that he had! Her hand was friendly.

He could have thanked her for yielding her hand without a stage scene; she had fine breeding by nature. The

gracefullest of trained ladies could not have passed through such an interview so perfectly in the right key;

and this was the woman he had seen at the wrestle with hideous death to save a muddy street child! She

touched the gentleman in him. Hard as it was while he held the hand of the wife, his little son's mother, who

might be called his bride, and drew him by the contact of their blood to a memory, seeming impossible, some

other world's attested reality,she the angel, he the demon of it, unimaginable, yet present, palpable, a

fact beyond his mind, he let her hand fall scarce pressed. Did she expect more than the common sense of it to

be said? The "more" was due to her, and should partly be said at their next meeting for the no further

separating; or else he would vow in his heart to spread it out over a whole life's course of wakeful devotion,

with here and there a hint of his younger black nature. Better that except for a desire seizing him to make

sacrifice of the demon he had been, offer him up hideously naked to her mercy. But it was a thing to be done

by hints, by fits, by small doses. She could only gradually be brought to the comprehension of how the man

or demon found indemnification under his yoke of marriage in snatching her, to torment, perhaps betray; and

solace for the hurt to his pride in spreading a snare for the beautiful Henrietta. A confession! It could be to

Knowledge of Carinthia would have urged him to the confession straightway. In spite of horror, the task of

helping to wash a black soul white would have been her compensation for loss of companionship with her

soldier brother. She would have held hot iron to the rabid wound and come to a love of the rescued sufferer.

It seemed to please her when he spoke of Mr. Rose Mackrell's applications to get back his volume of her

For the sake of winning her quick gleam at any word of the bridal couple, he conjured a picture of her Madge

and his Gower, saying: "That marriageas you will learnproves him honest from head to foot; as she is,

"My lady, adieu until I am over with this Calesford," he gestured, as in fetters.

She spared him the my lording as she said adieu, sensitive as she was, and to his perception now.

Lady Arpington had a satisfactory two minutes with him before he left the house. London town, on the great

day at Calesford, interchanged communications, to the comforting effect, that the Countess of Fleetwood

IT is of seemingly good augury for the cause of a suppliant man, however little for the man himself, when she

who has much to pardon can depict him in a manner that almost smiles, not unlike a dandling nurse the

miniature manchild sobbing off to sleep after a frenzy; an example of a genus framed for excuses, and he

more than others. Chillon was amused up to inquisitive surprise by Carinthia's novel idea of her formerly

dreaded riddle of a husband. As she sketched the very rational alliance proposed to her, and his kick at the

fetters of Calesford, a shadowy dash for an image of the solicitous tyrant was added perforce to complete the

scene; following which, her head moved sharply, the subject was flung over her shoulder.

She was developing; she might hold her ground with the husband, if the alliance should be resumed; and she

would be a companion for Henrietta in England: she was now independent, as to money, and she could break

an intolerable yoke without suffering privation. He kept his wrath under, determined not to use his influence

either way, sure though he was of her old father's voting for her to quit the man and enter the field where

qualities would be serviceable. The man probably feared a scandal more than the loss of his wife in her going.

He had never been thrashedthe sole apology Chillon discovered for him, in a flushed review of the

unavenged list of injuries Carinthia had sustained. His wise old father insisted on the value of an early

thrashing to trim and shape the growth of most young men. There was no proof of Lord Fleetwood's having

schemed to thwart his wager, so he put that accusation by: thinking for an instant, that if the man desired to

have his wife with him, and she left the country with her brother, his own act would recoil; or if she stayed to

hear of a villainy, Carinthia's show of scorn could lash. Henrietta praised my lord's kindness. He had been

one of the adorersas what man would not be!and upon her at least (he could hardly love her husband) he

had not wreaked his disappointment. A young man of huge wealth, having nothing to do but fatten his

whims, is the monster a rich country breeds under the blessing of peace. His wife, if a match for him, has her

work traced out:mean work for the child of their father, Chillon thought. She might be doing braver, more

suitable to the blood in her veins. But women have to be considered as women, not as possible heroines; and

supposing she held her own with this husband of hers; which meant, judging by the view of their unfolded

characters at present, a certain command of the freakish beast; she, whatever her task, would not be the one

set trotting. He came to his opinion through the estimate he had recently formed of Lord Fleetwood, and a

Her brows gloomed at a recurrence to that subject. Their business of the expedition absorbed her, each detail,

all the remarks he quoted of his chief, hopeful or weariful; for difficulties with the Spanish Government, and

with the English too, started up at every turn; and the rank and file of the contingent were mostly a rough lot,

where they were rather better than soaked weeds. A small body of trained soldiers had sprung to the call to

Carinthia breasted discouragement. "Father said the English learn from blows, Chillon."

"He might have added, they lose half their number by having to learn from blows, Carin."

"Yes, it is a wine country," she sighed. "But would the Spaniards have sent for us if their experience had told

Chillon brightened rigorously: "Yes, yes; there's just a something about our men at their best, hard to find

"He is Owain's friend and countryman," said Carinthia, and pleased her brother for talking like a girl, in the

midst of methodical calculations of the cost of this and that, to purchase the supplies he would need. She had

an organising head. On her way down from London she had drawn on instructions from a London physician

of old Peninsula experience to pencil a list of the medical and surgical stores required by a campaigning

army; she had gained information of the London shops where they were to be procured; she had learned to

read medical prescriptions for the composition of drugs. And she was at her Spanish still, not behind him in

the ordinary dialogue, and able to correct him on points of Spanish history relating to fortresses, especially

the Basque. A French bookseller had supplied her with the Vicomte d'Eschargue's recently published volume

of a Travels in Catalonia. Chillon saw paragraphs marked, pages dogeared, for reference. At the same time,

the question of Henrietta touched her anxiously. Lady Arpington's hints had sunk into them both.

"I have thought of St. Jean de Luz, Chillon, if Riette would consent to settle there. French people are friendly.

"Riette alone there?" said he, and drew her by her love of him into his altered mind; for he did not object to

London had taught her that a young woman in the giddy heyday of her beauty has to be guarded; her

belonging to us is the proud burden involving sacrifices. But at St. Jean de Luz, if Riette would consent to

reside there, Lord Fleetwood's absence and the neighbourhood of the war were reckoned on to preserve his

yokefellow from any fit of the abominated softness which she had felt in one premonitory tremor during

their late interview, and deemed it vile compared with the life of action and service beside, almost beside, her

brother, sharing his dangers at least. She would have had Chillon speak peremptorily to his wife regarding the

residence on the Spanish borders, adding, in a despair: "And me with her to protect her!"

All he refrained from was, the persuading her to stay in England and live reconciled with the gaoler of the

Chillon and Carinthia journeyed to London for purchases and a visit to lawyer, banker, and tradesmen, on

their way to meet his chief and Owain Wythan at Southampton. They lunched with Livia. The morrow was

the great Calesford day; Henrietta carolled of it. Lady Arpington had been afflictingly demure on the theme

of her presence at Calesford within her term of mourning. "But I don't mourn, and I'm not related to the

defunct, and I can't be denied the pleasure invented for my personal gratification," Henrietta's happy

flippancy pouted at the prudish objections. Moreover, the adored Columelli was to be her slave of song. The

termination of the London season had been postponed a whole week for Calesford: the utmost possible strain;

and her presence was understood to represent the Countess of Fleetwood, temporarily in decorous retirement.

Chillon was assured by her that the earl had expressed himself satisfied with his wife's reasonableness. "The

rest will follow." Pleading on the earl's behalf was a vain effort, but she had her grounds for painting Lord

Fleetwood's present mood to his countess in warm colours. "Nothing short of devotion, Chillon!" London's

extreme anxiety to see them united, and the cause of it, the immense good Janey could do to her country,

should certainly be considered by her, Henrietta said. She spoke feverishly. A mention of St. Jean de Luz for

a residence inflicted, it appeared, a more violent toothache than she had suffered from the proposal of

quarters in Cadiz. And now her husband had money? . . . she suggested his reinstatement in the English army.

Chillon hushed that: his chief had his word. Besides, he wanted schooling in war. Why had he married! His

love for her was the answer; and her beauty argued for the love. But possessing her, he was bound to win her

a name. So his reasoning ran to an accord with his military instincts and ambition. Nevertheless, the mournful

strange fact she recalled, that they had never waltzed together since they were made one, troubled his

countenance in the mirror of hers. Instead of the waltz, grief, low worries, dulness, an eclipse of her, had been

the beautiful creature's portion. It established mighty claims to a young husband's indulgence. She hummed a

few bars of his favourite old Viennese waltz, with "Chillon!" invitingly and reproachfully. His loathing of

Lord Fleetwood had to withstand an envious jump at the legs in his vision of her partner on the morrow. He

"You really do wish me to go, my darling? It is Chillon's wish?" She begged for the words; she had them, and

Carinthia had observed her. She was heartsick under pressure of thoughts the heavier for being formless.

They signified in the sum her doom to see her brother leave England for the war, and herself crumble to

pieces from the imagined figure of herself beside him on or near the field. They could not be phrased, for

they accused the beloved brother of a weakness in the excessive sense of obligation to the beautiful woman

who had wedded him. Driving down to Southampton by the night coach, her tenderness toward Henrietta

held other thoughts unshaped, except one, that moved in its twilight, murmuring of how the love of pleasure

keeps us blind children. And how the innocents are pushed by it to snap at wicked bait, which the wealthy

angle with, pointed a charitable index on some of our social story. The Countess Livia, not an innocent like

Henrietta, had escaped the poisoned tongues by contracting a third marriage"in time!" Lady Arpington

said; and the knotty question was presented to a young mind: Why are the innocents tempted to their ruin,

and the darker natures allowed an escape? Any streetboy could have told her of the virtue in quick wits. But

her unexercised reflectiveness was on the highroad of accepted doctrines, with their chorus of the moans of

gossips for supernatural intervention to give us justice. She had not learnt that those innocents, pushed by an

excessive love of pleasure, are for the term lower in the scale than their wary darker cousins, and must come

However, the result of her meditations was to show her she was directed to be Henrietta's guardian. After

that, she had no thoughts; travelling beside Chillon, she was sheer sore feeling, as of a body aching for its

heart plucked out. The bitterness of the separation to come between them prophesied a tragedy. She touched

During six days of travels from port to port along the Southern and Western coasts, she joined in the

inspection of the English contingent about to be shipped. They and their chief and her brother were plain to

sight, like sample print of a book's first page, blank sheets for the rest of the volume. If she might have been

one among them, she would have dared the reckless forecast. Her sensations were those of a bird that has

flown into a room, and beats wings against the ceiling and the windowpanes. A close, hard sky, a

transparent prison wall, narrowed her powers, mocked her soul. She spoke little; what she said impressed

Chillon's chief, Owain Wythan was glad to tell her. The good friend had gone counter to the tide of her breast

by showing satisfaction with the prospect that she would take her rightful place in the world. Her

concentrated mind regarded the good friend as a phantom of a man, the world's echo. His dead Rebecca

would have understood her passion to be her brother's comrade, her abasement in the staying at home to

guard his butterfly. Owain had never favoured her project; he could not now perceive the special dangers

Chillon would be exposed to in her separation from him. She had no means of explaining what she felt

intensely, that dangers, death, were nothing to either of them, if they shared the fate together.

Her rejected petition to her husband for an allowance of money, on the day in Wales, became the vivid

memory which brings out motives in its glow. Her husband hated her brother; and why? But the answer was

lighted fierily down another avenue. A true husband, a lord of wealth, would have rejoiced to help the brother

of his wife. He was the cause of Chillon's ruin and this adventure to restore his fortunes. Could she endure a

close alliance with the man while her brother's life was imperilled? Carinthia rebuked her drowsy head for

not having seen his reason for refusing at the time. "How long I am before I see anything that does not stare

in my face!" She was a married woman, whose order of mind rendered her singularly subject to the holiness

of the tie; and she was a weak woman, she feared. Already, at intervals, now that action on a foreign field of

the thunders and lightnings was denied, imagination revealed her dissolving to the union with her husband,

and cried her comment on herself as the world's basest of women for submitting to it while Chillon's life ran

risks; until finally she said: "Not before I have my brother home safe!" an exclamation equal to a vow.

That being settled, some appearance of equanimity returned; she talked of the scarlet business as one she

participated in as a distant spectator. Chillon's chief was hurrying the embarkation of his troops; within ten

days the whole expedition would be afloat. She was to post to London for further purchases, he following to

take leave of his wife and babe. Curiously, but hardly remarked on during the bustle of work, Livia had been

the one to send her short account of the great day at Calesford; Henrietta, the born correspondent, pencilling a

couple of lines; she was well, dreadfully fatigued, rather a fright from a trip of her foot and fall over a low

Henrietta was the last person Carinthia would have expected to meet midway on the London road. Her name

was called from a carriage as she drove up to the door of the Winchester hostelry, and in the lady, over whose

right eye and cheek a covering fold of silk concealed a bandage, the voice was her sister Riette's. With her

"Chillon is down thereyou have left him there?" Henrietta greeted her, saw the reply, and stepped out of

her carriage. "You shall kiss the children afterwards; come into one of the rooms, Janey."

Alone together, before an embrace, she said, in the voice of tears hardening to the world's business, "Chillon

must not enter London. You see the figure I am. My character's in as bad case up therethanks to those

men! My husband has lost his `golden Riette.' When you see beneath the bandage! He will have the right to

put me away. His `beauty of beauties'! I'm fit only to dress as a pageboy and run at his heels. My hero! my

poor dear! He thinking I cared for nothing but amusement, flattery. Was ever a punishment so cruel to the

noblest of generous husbands! Because I know he will overlook it, make light of it, never reproach his Riette.

And the rose he married comes to him a shrivelled leaf of a potpourri heap. You haven't seen me yet. I was

She took breath. Carinthia pressed her lips on the cheek sensible to a kiss, and Henrietta pursued, in words

liker to sobs: "Anywhere, Cadiz, St. Jean de Luz, hospital work either, anywhere my husband likes, anything!

I want to work, or I'll sit and rock the children. I'm awake at last. Janey, we're lambs to vultures with those

men. I don't pretend I was the perfect fool. I thought myself so safe. I let one of them squeeze my hand one

day, he swears. You know what a passion is; you have it for mountains and battles, I for music. I do

remember, one morning before sunrise, driving back to town out of Windsor,a dance, the officers of the

Guards,and my lord's trumpeter at the back of the coach blowing notes to melt a stone, I found a man's

hand had mine. I remember Lord Fleetwood looking over his shoulder and smiling hard and lashing his

horses. But listenyes, at Calesford it happened. Heoh, hear the name, then; Chillon must never hear

it;Lord Brailstone was denied the right to step on Lord Fleetwood's grounds. The Opera company had

finished selections from my Pirata. I went out for cool air; little Sir Meeson beside me. I had a folded gauze

veil over my head, tied at the chin in a bow. Some one ran up to me Lord Brailstone. He poured forth their

poetry. They suppose it the wine for their `beautiful woman.' I dare say I laughed or told him to go, and he

began a tirade against Lord Fleetwood. There's no mighty difference between one beast of prey and another.

Let me get away from them all! Though now!they would not lift an eyelid. This is my husband's treasure

returning to him. We have to be burnt to come to our senses. Janeyoh! you do well!it was fiendish; old

ballads, melodrama plays, I see they were built on men's deeds. Janey, I could not believe it, I have to

believe, it is forced down my throat:that man, your husband, because he could not forgive my choosing

Chillon, schemed for Chillon's ruin. I could not believe it until I saw in the glass this disfigured wretch he has

made of me. Livia serves him, she hates him for the tyrant he is; she has opened my eyes. And not for

himself, no, for his revenge on me, for my name to be as my face is. He tossed me to his dogs; fair game for

them! You do well, Janey; he is capable of any villainy. And has been calling at Livia's door twice a day,

inquiring anxiously; begs the first appointment possible. He has no shame; he is accustomed to buy men and

women; he thinks his money will buy my pardon, give my face a new skin, perhaps. A woman swears to you,

Janey, by all she holds holy on earth, it is not the loss of her beautythere will be a wrinkled patch on the

cheek for life, the surgeon says; I am to bear a brown spot, like a bruised peach they sell at the fruitshops

cheap. Chillon's Riette! I think of that, the miserable wife I am for him without the beauty he loved so! I think

of myself as guilty, a really guilty woman, when I compare my loss with my husband's."

"Because, Janey, what have I ever been to Chillon but the goodlooking thing he was proud of? It's gone. Oh,

the accident. Brailstone had pushed little Corby away; he held my hand, kept imploring, he wanted the usual

two minutes, and all to warn me againstI've told you; and he saw Lord Fleetwood coming. I got my hand

free, and stepped back, my head spinning; and I fell. That I recollect, and a sight of flames, like the end of the

world. I fell on one of the oillamps bordering the grass; my veil lighted; I had fainted; those two men saw

nothing hut one another; and little Sir Meeson was no help; young Lord Cressett dashed out the flames. They

brought me to my senses for a second swoon. Livia says I woke moaning to be taken away from that hated

Calesford. It was, oh! never to see that husband of yours again. Forgive him, if you can. Not I. I carry the

mark of him to my grave. I have called myself `Skindeep' ever since, day and nightthe name I deserve."

"We will return to Chillon together, my own," said Carinthia. "It may not be so bad." And in the hope that her

lovely sister exaggerated a defacement leaving not much worse than a small scar, her heart threw off its load

of the recent perplexities, daylight broke through her dark wood. Henrietta brought her liberty. How far guilty

her husband might be, she was absolved from considering; sufficiently guilty to release her. Upon that

conclusion, pity for the awakened Riette shed purer teardrops through the gratitude she could not restrain,

could hardly conceal, on her sister's behalf and her own. Henrietta's prompt despatch to Croridge to fetch the

babes, her journey down out of a sickroom to stop Chillon's visit to London, proved her an awakened

woman, well paid for the stain on her face, though the stain were lasting. Never had she loved Henrietta,

never shown her so much love, as on the road to the deepening Western hues. Her sisterly warmth surprised

the woeful spotted beauty with a reflection that this martial Janey was after all a woman of feeling, one whom

her husband, if he came to know it and the depth of it, the rich sound of it, would mourn in sackcloth to have

And he did, the Dame interposes for the final word: he mourned his loss of Carinthia Jane in sackcloth and

ashes, notwithstanding that he had the world's affectionate condolences about him to comfort him, by reason

of his ungovernable countess's misbehaviour once more, according to the report, in running away with a

young officer to take part in a foreign insurrection; and when he was most the idol of his countrymen and

countrywomen, which it was once his immoderate aim to be, he mourned her day and night, knowing her

spotless, however wild a follower of her father's MAXIMS FOR MEN. He believedsome have said his

belief was not in errorthat the woman to aid and make him man and be the star in human form to him, was

miraculously revealed on the day of his walk through the foreign pine forest, and his proposal to her at the

ducal ball was an inspiration of his Good Genius, continuing to his marriage morn, and then running

downwards, like an overstrained reel, under the leadership of his Bad. From turning to turning of that descent,

he saw himself advised to retrieve the fatal steps, at each point attempting it just too late; until too late by an

hour, he reached the seaport where his wife had embarked; and her brother, Chillon John, cruelly, it was the

common opinion, refused him audience. No syllable of the place whither she fled abroad was vouchsafed to

him; and his confessions of sins and repentance of them were breathed to empty air. The wealthiest nobleman

of all England stood on the pier, watching the regiments of that doomed expedition mount ship, ready with

the bribe of the greater part of his possessions for a single word to tell him of his wife's destination. Lord

Feltre, his companion, has done us the service to make his emotions known. He describes them, true, as the

Papist who sees every incident contribute to precipitate sinners into the bosom of his Church. But this, we

have warrant for saying, did not occur before the earl had visited and strolled in the woods with his former

secretary, Mr. Gower Woodseer, of whom so much has been told, and he little better than an infidel,

declaring his aim to be at contentedness in life. Lord Fleetwood might envy for a while, he could not be

Within six months of Carinthia Jane's disappearance, people had begun to talk of strange doings at Calesford;

and some would have it, that it was the rehearsal of a play, in which friars were prominent characters, for

there the frocked gentry were seen flitting across the ground. Then the world learnt too surely that the

dreaded evil had happened, its wealthiest nobleman had gone over to the Church of Rome!carrying all his

personal and unentailed estate to squander it on images and a dogma. Calesford was attacked by the

mob;one of the notorious riots in our history was a result of the Amazing Marriage, and roused the talk of

it again over Great Britain. When Carinthia Jane, after two years of adventures and perils rarely encountered

by women, returned to these shores, she was, they say, most anxious for news of her husband; and then,

indeed, it has been conjectured, they might have been united to walk henceforward as one for life, but for the

sad factDr. Glossop has the datesthat the Earl of Fleetwood had two months and some days previously

abjured his rank, his remaining property, his freedom and his title, to become the Brother Russett of the

mountain monastery he visited in simple curiosity once with his betraying friend, Lord Feltre. For he was

Mr. Rose Mackrell, in his Memoirs, was the first who revealed to the world, that the Mademoiselle de

Levellier of the French Count fighting with the Carlistsfalsely claimed by him as a Frenchwomanwas,

in very truth, Carinthia Jane, the Countess of Fleetwood, to whom Carlists and Legitimists alike were

indebted for tender care of them on the field and in hospital; and who rode from one camp through the other

up to the tent of the Pretender to the throne of Spain, bearing her petition for her brother's release; which was

granted, in acknowledgment of her "renowned humanity to both conflicting armies," as the words translated

by Dr. Glossop run. Certain it is she brought her wounded brother safe home to England, and prisoners in that

war usually had short shrift. For three years longer she was the Countess of Fleetwood, "widow of a living

suicide," Mr. Rose Mackrell describes the state of the Marriage at that period. No whisper of divorce did she

Six months after it was proved that Brother Russett had perished of his austerities, we learn she said to the

beseeching applicant for her hand, Mr. Owain Wythan, with the gift of it, in compassion: "Rebecca could

foretell events." Carinthia Jane had ever been ashamed of second marriages, and the union with her friend

Rebecca's faithful simpleton gave it, one supposes, a natural air, for he as little as she had previously known

the wedded state. She married him, Henrietta has written, because of his wooing her with dog's eyes instead

of words. The once famous beauty carried a wrinkled spot on her cheek to her grave; a saving disfigurement,

and the mark of changes in the story told you enough to make us think it a providential intervention for such

So much I can say: the facts related, with some regretted omissions, by which my story has so skeleton a

look, are those that led to the lamentable conclusion. But the melancholy, the pathos of it, the heart of all

England stirred by it, have been and the panting excitement it was to every listenersacrificed in the vain

effort to render events as consequent to your understanding as a piece of logic, through an exposure of

character! Character must ever be a mystery, only to be explained in some degree by conduct; and that is very

dependent upon accident: and unless we have a perpetual whipping of the tender part of the reader's mind,

interest in invisible persons must needs flag. For it is an infant we address, and the story teller whose art

excites an infant to serious attention succeeds best; with English people assuredly, I rejoice to think, though I

pray their patience here while that philosophy and exposure of character block the course along a road