For her brother at wrestle with his fallen fortunes was now the beating heart of Carinthia’s mind.  Her husband was a shadow there.  He did obscure it, and he might annoy, he was unable to set it in motion.  He sat there somewhat like Youth’s apprehension of Death:—­the dark spot seen mistily at times through people’s tears, or visioned as in an ambush beyond the hills; occasionally challenged to stimulate recklessness; oftener overlooked, acknowledged for the undesired remote of life’s conditions, life’s evil, fatal, ill-assorted yoke-fellow; and if it was in his power to burst out of his corner and be terrible to her, she could bring up a force unnamed and unmeasured, that being the blood of her father in her veins.  Having done her utmost to guard her babe, she said her prayers; she stood for peace or the struggle.

‘Does Lord Fleetwood speak of coming here?’ she said.

‘To-morrow.’

‘I go to Croridge to-morrow.’

‘Your ladyship returns?’

’Yes, I return Mr. Gower, you have fifty minutes before you dress for dinner.’

He thought only of the exceeding charity of the intimation; and he may be excused for his not seeing the feminine full answer it was, in an implied, unmeditated contrast.  He went gladly to find his new comrade, his flower among grass-blades, the wonderful creature astonishing him and surcharging his world by setting her face at him, opening her breast to him, breathing a young man’s word of words from a woman’s mouth.  His flower among grass-blades for a head looking studiously down, she was his fountain of wisdom as well, in the assurance she gave him of the wisdom of his choice.

But Madge had put up the ‘prize-fighter’s lass,’ by way of dolly defence, to cover her amazed confusion when the proposal of this well-liked gentleman to a girl such as she sounded churchy.  He knocked it over easily; it left, however, a bee at his ear and an itch to transfer the buzzer’s attentions and tease his darling; for she had betrayed herself as right good game.  Nor is there happier promise of life-long domestic enlivenment for a prescient man of Letters than he has in the contemplation of a pretty face showing the sensitiveness to the sting, which is not allowed to poison her temper, and is short of fetching tears.  The dear innocent girl gave this pleasing promise; moreover, she could be twisted-to laugh at herself, just a little.  Now, the young woman who can do that has already jumped the hedge into the highroad of philosophy, and may become a philosopher’s mate in its by-ways, where the minute discoveries are the notable treasures.