Four days of desolate wanderings over the estate were occupied chiefly in his decreeing the fall of timber that obstructed views, and was the more imperatively doomed for his bailiff’s intercession.  ‘Sound wood’ the trees might be:  they had to assist in defraying the expense of separate establishments.  A messenger to Queeney from Croridge then announced the Countess’s return ‘for a couple of hours.’  Queeney said it was the day when her ladyship examined the weekly bills of the household.  That was in the early morning.  The post brought my lord a letter from Countess Livia, a most infrequent writer.  She had his word to pay her debts; what next was she for asking?  He shrugged, opened the letter, and stared at the half dozen lines.  The signification of them rapped on his consciousness of another heavy blow before he was perfectly intelligent.

All possible anticipation seemed here outdone:  insomuch that he held palpable evidence of the Fates at work to harass and drive him.  She was married to the young Earl of Cressett!’

Fleetwood printed the lines on his eyeballs.  They were the politely flowing feminine of a statement of the fact, which might have been in one line.  They flourished wantonly:  they were deadly blunt.  And of all men, this youngster, who struck at him through her lips with the reproach, that he had sped the good-looking little beast upon his road to ruin:—­ perhaps to Ambrose Mallard’s end!

CHAPTER XLII

THE RETARDED COURTSHIP

Carinthia reached Esslemont near noon.  She came on foot, and had come unaccompanied, stick in hand, her dress looped for the roads.  Madge bustled her shorter steps up the park beside her; Fleetwood met her on the terrace.

‘No one can be spared at Croridge,’ she said.  ‘I go back before dark.’  Apology was not thought of; she seemed wound to the pitch.

He bowed; he led into the morning-room.  ‘The boy is at Croridge?’

‘With me.  He has his nurse.  Madge was at home here more than there.’

‘Why do you go back?’

‘I am of use to my brother.’

‘Forgive me—­in what way?’

’He has enemies about him.  They are the workmen of Lord Levellier.  They attacked Lekkatts the other night, and my uncle fired at them out of a window and wounded a man.  They have sworn they will be revenged.  Mr. Wythan is with my brother to protect him.’

’Two men, very well; they don’t want, if there’s danger, a woman’s aid in protecting him?’

She smiled, and her smile was like the hint of the steel blade an inch out of sheath.

‘My brother does not count me a weak woman.’

‘Oh no!  No one would think that,’ Fleetwood said hurriedly and heartily.  ‘Least of all men, I, Carinthia.  But you might be rash.’

‘My brother knows me cautious.’

‘Chillon?’