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 happier with us girls.’

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 tone—­the 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 physical to grasp the general situation and place the protagonist foremost.

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 implied—­though it might be but one of Love’s shrewder discords—­such 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 hidden sentiments in relation to the mastering male, whom they uphold.

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 movements at his understanding from time to time.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Cock-sure has crowed low by sunset
Drink is their death’s river, rolling them on helpless
Father and she were aware of one another without conversing
Fun, at any cost, is the one object worth a shot
He was the prisoner of his word
Heartily she thanked the girl for the excuse to cry
Hearts that make one soul do not separately count their gifts
Life is the burlesque of young dreams
Make a girl drink her tears, if they ain’t to be let fall
On a morning when day and night were made one by fog
Poetic romance is delusion
Push me to condense my thoughts to a tight ball
She endured meekly, when there was no meekness
She seemed really a soaring bird brought down by the fowler
She stood with a dignity that the word did not express
There is no driver like stomach
Touch sin and you accommodate yourself to its vileness
You played for gain, and that was a licenced thieving