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 in the British prize-ring.

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 civilization, is nearer the mark; and ought she to be discouraged?

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 wooing—­which, 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 execrable—­perhaps pardonable—­art; 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 traversed backward at a whipping pace on a moonless night.  The drive from Canleys to the Royal Sovereign could be done by good pacers in an hour and a half, little more—­with Ives and the stables ready, and some astonishment in a certain unseen chamber.  Fleetwood chuckled at a vision of romantic devilry—­perfectly legitimate too.  Something, more to inflict than enjoy, was due to him.

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 be needed and solicited none to give him.  It swept among his ruminations while he pricked Potts and Mallard to supply his craving for satanical fare.