She resumed her advance, with a slight abatement of her challengeing match, sedately; very collectedly erect; changed in the fulness of her figure and her poised calm bearing.

He heard her voice addressing Gower:  ’Yes, they do; we noticed the slate-roofs, looking down on them.  They do look like a council of rooks in the hollow; a parliament, you said.  They look exceedingly like, when a peep of sunshine falls.  Oh, no; not clergymen!’

She laughed at the suggestion.

She might be one of the actresses by nature.

Is the man unsympathetic with women a hater of Nature deductively?  Most women are actresses.  As to worshipping Nature, we go back to the state of heathen beast, Mr. Philosopher Gower could be answered . . . .

Fleetwood drew in his argument.  She stood before him.  There was on his part an insular representation of old French court salute to the lady, and she replied to it in the exactest measure, as if an instructed proficient.

She stood unshadowed.  ‘We have come to bid you adieu, my lord,’ she said, and no trouble of the bosom shook her mellow tones.  Her face was not the chalk-quarry or the rosed rock; it was oddly individual, and, in a way, alluring, with some gentle contraction of her eyelids.  But evidently she stood in full repose, mistress of herself.

Upon him, it appeared, the whole sensibility of the situation was to be thrown.  He hardened.

‘We have had to settle business here,’ he said, speaking resonantly, to cover his gazing discomposedly, all but furtively.

The child was shown, still asleep.  A cunning infant not a cry in him to excuse a father for preferring concord or silence or the bachelor’s exemption.

‘He is a strong boy,’ the mother said.  ’Our doctor promises he will ride over all the illnesses.’

Fleetwood’s answer set off with an alarum of the throat, and dwindled to ’We ‘ll hope so.  Seems to sleep well.’

She had her rocky brows.  They were not barren crags, and her shape was Nature’s ripeness, it was acknowledged:  She stood like a lance in air-rather like an Amazon schooled by Athene, one might imagine.  Hues of some going or coming flush hinted the magical trick of her visage.  She spoke in modest manner, or it might be indifferently, without a flaunting of either.

’I wish to consult you, my lord.  He is not baptized.  His Christian names?’

‘I have no choice.’

‘I should wish him to bear one of my brother’s names.’

‘I have no knowledge of your brother’s names.’

‘Chillon is one.’

‘Ah!  Is it, should you think, suitable to our climate?’

‘Another name of my brother’s is John.’

‘Bull.’  The loutish derision passed her and rebounded on him.  ’That would be quite at home.’

‘You will allow one of your own names, my lord?’

’Oh, certainly, if you desire it, choose.  There are four names you will find in a book of the Peerage or Directory or so.  Up at the castle—­or you might have written:—­better than these questions on the public road.  I don’t demur.  Let it be as you like.’