‘Poor mother!’ Carinthia sighed.  ’It may last a year in the child’s body, and one day he shudders at water.  Father saw a bitten man die.  I could fear death with the thought of that poison in me.  I pray Dr. Griffiths may come.’

Fleetwood shuffled a step.  ‘He will come, he will come.’

The mother and some women now packed the room.

A gabble arose between them and Edwards.  They fired sharp snatches of speech, and they darted looks at the lady and her lord.

‘They do not know!’ said Carinthia.

Gower brought her news that the dog had been killed; Martha and her precious burden were outside, a mob of men, too.  He was not alarmed; but she went to the door and took her babe in her arms, and when the women observed the lady holding her own little one, their looks were softened.  At a hint of explanation from Edwards, the guttural gabble rattled up to the shrill vowels.

Fleetwood’s endurance broke short.  The packed small room, the caged-monkey lingo, the wailful child, and the past and apprehended debate upon the burning of flesh, composed an intolerable torture.  He said to Edwards:  ’Go to the men; settle it with them.  We have to follow that man Wythan; no peace otherwise.  Tell the men the body of the dog must be secured for analysis.  Mad or not, it’s the same.  These Welsh mothers and grandmothers won’t allow cautery at any price.  Hark at them!’

He turned to Carinthia:  ’Your ladyship will let Mr. Edwards or Mr. Woodseer conduct you to the house where you are residing.  You don’t know these excitable people.  I wish you to leave.’

She replied softly:  ‘I stay for the doctor’s coming.’

‘Impossible for me to wait, and I can’t permit you to be here.’

‘It is life and death, and I must not be commanded.’

‘You may be proposing gratuitous agony.’

‘I would do it to my own child.’

The earl attacked Gower:  ‘Add your voice to persuade Lady Fleetwood.’

Gower said:  ‘What if I think with Lady Fleetwood?’

‘You would see her do it?’

‘Do it myself, if there was no one else’

‘This dog-all of you have gone mad,’ the earl cried.

’Griffiths may keep his head; it’s the only chance.  Take my word, these Welshwomen just listen to them won’t have it.  You ’ll find yourself in a nest of Furies.  It may be right to do, it’s folly to propose it, madness to attempt it.  And I shall be bitten if I stop here a minute longer; I’m gone; I can neither command nor influence.  I should have thought Gower Woodseer would have kept his wits.’

Fleetwood’s look fell on Madge amid the group.  Gower’s perception of her mistress through the girl’s devotion to her moved him.  He took Madge by the hand, and the sensation came that it was the next thing to pressing his wife’s.  ’You’re a loyal girl.  You have a mistress it ’s an honour to serve.  You bind me.  By the way, Ines shall run down for a minute before I go.’