The earl said humorously:  ’You will grant me permission to lunch at your mistress’s table in her absence?’ And she said:  ‘My lord!’ And he resumed, to waken her interest with a personal question:  ’You like our quiet country round Esslemont?’ She said:  ‘I do,’ and gave him plain look for look.  Her eye was undefended:  he went into it, finding neither shallow nor depth, simply the look, always the look; whereby he knew that no story of man was there, and not the shyest of remote responsive invitations from Nature’s wakened and detected rogue.  The bed of an unmarried young woman’s eye yields her secret of past and present to the intrepid diver, if he can get his plunge; he holds her for the tenth of a minute, that is the revealment.  Jewel or oyster-shell, it is ours.  She cannot withhold it, he knew right well.  This girl, then, was, he could believe, one of the rarely exampled innocent in knowledge.  He was practised to judge.

Invitation or challenge or response from the handsomest he would have scorned just then.  His native devilry suffered a stir at sight of an innocent in knowledge and spotless after experiences.  By a sudden singular twist, rather unfairly, naturally, as it happened, he attributed it to an influence issuing from her mistress, to whom the girl was devoted, whom consequently she copied; might physically, and also morally, at a distance, resemble.

’Well, you’ve been a faithful servant to your lady, my dear; I hope you’ll be comfortable here,’ he said.  ‘She likes the mountains.’

’My lady would be quite contented if she could pass two months of the year in the mountains,’ Madge answered.

’Look at me.  They say people living together get a likeness to one another.  What’s your opinion?  Upon my word, your eyebrows remind me, though they’re not the colour—­they have a bend!’

‘You’ve seen my lady in danger, my lord.’

’Yes; well, there ’s no one to resemble her there, she has her mark—­kind of superhuman business.  We’re none of us “fifty feet high, with phosphorus heads,” as your friend Mr. Gower Woodseer says of the prodigiosities.  Lady Fleetwood is back—­when?’

‘Before dark, she should be.’

He ran up the steps to the house.

At Lekkatts beneath Croridge a lean midday meal was being finished hard on the commencement by a silent company of three.  When eating is choking to the younger members of the repast, bread and cold mutton-bone serve the turn as conclusively as the Frenchman’s buffet-dishes.  Carinthia’s face of unshed tears dashed what small appetite Chillon had.  Lord Levellier plied his fork in his right hand ruminating, his back an arch across his plate.