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 moderately; till, swelling and purpling, he cried:  ‘Where’s the husband?’

That was the emissary’s question likewise.

‘If I could have found him, sir, I should not have troubled you.’

’Disappeared?  Plays the man of his word, then plays the madman!  Prize-fight the first day of her honeymoon?  Good Lord!  Leaves her at the inn?’

‘She was left.’

‘When was she left?’

‘As soon as the fight was over—­as far as I understand.’

The admiral showered briny masculine comments on that bridegroom.

’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?’

‘Red-gold of the ballads; chestnut-brown, with threads of fire.’

’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 straining, to an Arctic region smitten by the beams.

‘Nothing breaks her courage,’ he said.

’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 to-night.  Oblige me, half a minute.’

The admiral stretched his hand for an arm to give support, stood, and dropped into the chair, signifying a fit of giddiness in the word ‘Head.’

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 judgement.  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 problems:—­if we are to go! his youthful frame insistingly added.