her rooms.’  How quietly the words were spoken!  There was a charm in the retrospect of her mouth and manner.  One of the rare women who never pout or attitudinize, she could fling her glove gracefully—­ one might add, capturingly under every aspect, she was a handsome belligerent.  The words he had to combat pleased his memory.  Some good friend, Lady Arpington probably, had instructed her in the art of dressing to match her colour.

Concerning himself, he made no stipulation, but he reflected on Lord Feltre’s likely estimate of her as a bit of a heathen.  And it might be to her advantage, were she and Feltre to have some conversations.  Whatever the faith, a faith should exist, for without the sentiment of religion, a woman, he says, is where she was when she left the gates of Eden.  A man is not much farther.  Feltre might have saved Ambrose Mallard.  He is, however, right in saying, that the woman with the sentiment of religion in her bosom is a box of holy incense distinguishing her from all other women.  Empty of it, she is devil’s bait.  At best, she is a creature who cannot overlook an injury, or must be exacting God knows what humiliations before she signs the treaty.

Informed at the house that her ladyship had been staying up on Croridge for the last two days, Fleetwood sent his hardest shot of the eyes at Gower.  Let her be absent:  it was equal to the first move of war, and absolved him from contemplated proposals to make amends.  But the enforced solitary companionship with this ruminator of a fellow set him asking whether the godless dog he had picked up by the wayside was not incarnate another of the sins he had to expiate.  Day after day, almost hourly, some new stroke fell on him.  Why?  Was he selected for persecution because he was wealthy?  The Fates were driving him in one direction, no doubt of that.

This further black mood evaporated, and like a cessation of English storm-weather bequeathed him gloom.  Ashamed of the mood, he was nevertheless directed by its final shadows to see the ruminating tramp in Gower, and in Madge the prize-fighter’s jilt:  and round about Esslemont a world eyeing an Earl of Fleetwood, who painted himself the man he was, or was held to be, by getting together such a collection, from the daughter of the Old Buccaneer to the ghastly corpse of Ambrose Mallard.  Why, clearly, wealth was the sole origin and agent of the mischief.  With somewhat less of it, he might have walked in his place among the nation’s elect, the ‘herd of the gilt horns,’ untroubled by ambitions and ideas.

Arriving thus far, he chanced to behold Gower and Madge walking over the grounds near the western plantation, and he regretted the disappearance of them, with the fellow talking hard into the girl’s ear.  Those two could think he had been of some use.  The man pretending to philosophical depth was at any rate honest; one could swear to the honesty of the girl, though she had been a reckless hussy.  Their humble little hopes and means to come to union approached, after a fashion, hymning at his ears.  Those two were pleasanter to look on than amorous lords and great ladies, who are interesting only when they are wicked.