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 altar—­the 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 us—­romance—­is not at all bad cookery.  Poetic romance is delusion—­a tale of a Corsair; a poet’s brain, a bottle of gin, and a theatrical wardrobe.  Comic romance is about us everywhere, alive for the tapping.

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.  Son-in-law 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 prize-fight—­a 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 roused the fervid latent sisterhood in the breast of women.

Before he mounted the coach, Lord Fleetwood talked to Kit Ives.  He pointed at an upper window, seemed to be issuing directions.  Kit nodded; he understood it, whatever it was.  You might have said, a pair of burglars.  The girl ran downstairs to bid her lover good-bye and show him she really rejoiced in his victory.  Kit came to her saying:  ’Given my word of honour I won’t make a beast of myself to-night.  Got to watch over you and your lady.’

Lord Fleetwood started his fresh team, casting no glance at the windows of the room where his bride was.  He and the gentlemen on the coach were laughing.

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 thought for them about her.