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 figure—­ her real figure.  I think her face . . .  I can’t describe . . . it flashes.’

‘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 animation—­ I 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.  Does Madge understand?’

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 understand that once.’

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 the curved decline of the narrow roadway.  His whip was up for signal.

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 before he can enfold her.

Carinthia walked to be overtaken, not daring to fever her blood at a swifter pace; ‘lamed with an infant,’ the thought recurred.

‘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.’